Li Wei

For ten years, the art world has been going nuts for "Chinese art". As a result, demand has soared, leading to the pool of genius becoming rather thinned with third-rate individuals from China looking to cash in on the lucrative market. Li Wei is not one of the hoard: he creates snazzy, interesting, and fun art that has some substance behind the playful veneer. Most iteresting to me is his awareness of Western art principles and art history, and his use of such information in his work.


Let's slide off-topic for a bit

A question I always toy with is, What makes a work of art specific to a place or people or whatever? This unsettlingly, leads to an ever-increasing range of further questions..
Just what the hell is Chinese art, or Western art, or Islamic art? What makes Chinese art different from other forms of art?
In this day and age, of interconnectivity, of a global village, of an internatinal art scene, is there such a thing as appropriation? Just what am I entitled to call my own, my identity? Am I able to add to this personal identity through education and experience?

The artists being looked at this week hopefully address these questions through their art. Comments will be placed, seemingly out-of-place, demonstrating how these works of art answer the questions listed above. This blog is not so much for others, but more as a visual diary of what is feeding my papers, and inspiring my art production.


Back to Li Wei.
Believe it or not, Li Wei asserts that the images he produces are executed without the aid of digital mainpuation: he uses mirrors and wires to hide his tricks. It seems that every article makes a big deal out of this - the fact that he doesn't use photoshop. If someone can tell me why this is important, please let me know.
The images themsleves are wonderful. A lot of contemporary art produced in China comes off as grand, hard, either very soft or very sharp. Lots of people. Cai Guo-Qiang drawing with gunpowder. Gu Dexin with rotting fruit and vaginas in the back of heads. Song Dong licking everything. Cao Fei's ambitious factory workers. This follows in that vein, without the grandiose-(and obvious)-in-your-face-ness found in the works of Sui Jianguo and, the granddaddy of them all, Wang Guangyi.

Li Wei's works often offer up someting legible to both an Eastern and a Western audience. The link to kung-fu-type movies is easily discernable. the "tricks" are accomplished using camera tricks and wires, giving the individuals who appear in the images the grace and poise of superhuman powers. Have you noticed that difference before, between hollywood and HK movies? There is nothing graceful to be found in the abilities of the Hulk or Spiderman: they still possess a weight that allows our mind to better buy in to the fakery. Superpowers of the East, if I may call it that, extend to balance and weight and focus, allowing for such a picuture as that directly above.

So, the top picture.. .. to what are you relating it? Yves Kline's jump from a second story window, maybe? Has 9/11 ruined your eyes, and all you see are world trade center jumpers? Do you see a perceive a population drunk on the vertigo of a society growing at an unbelievable pace, sometimes stumbling, sometimes stumbling to their deaths?
"My artistic language is universal and deals with themes about contemporary politics and society using symbols understood by everyone in every part of the world." says Li Wei, as quoted from the dailymail.co.uk

Other elements of the work also put it on the fence, as to which tradition it is following. The works are a mix of both performance and photography. This blurring of medium is traditionally found in Western works, though have become quite commonly found in the employ of Chinese artists who use video (think of Xu Zhen, and his fake expedition to Everset. In fact, think of all his video work, which is very performance-driven).

These images seem amateur and grand at the same time, and offer a lighthearted and understandable look at Chinese society of the early 21st century.



Li Wei's homepage