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For his first show in Hong Kong, 10 Chancery Lane Gallery will present an exhibition and performance by the internationally renowned Chinese artist LI WEI.
LI WEI's takes performance at its starting point. These are stagings of chaotic situations, impossible actions, and unlikely occurrences, all of which are treated with a large doses of irony and an acid sense of humour, and are used by the artist to confront diverse social and political topics with a language and code that is easily understandable by anyone anywhere in the world. The final result is photographs and videos made during the performances that are later digitally manipulated.
In an earlier series Mirror, LI WEI's head flew around the most varied spaces like an independent being, and Falls, where his body impales like a missile into the ground, into a glass building, into a car. In the series titled The Life is a lot it One the artist is thrown about by a supernaturally strong girl, where as in A Pause for Humanity he finds himself with his wife and newborn daughter at the top of a construction site in an overwhelmingly dangerous situation that has no easy outcome.
As Eleonora Battiston writes in the catalogue, published by Damiani: “Innovation, development, and dizzying economic growth have allowed modern man to fly high, giving him an illusion of superiority and omnipotence, but in this fast and disorderly flight, the destination is not known and no parachute is worn.”
LI WEI (Hubei, 1970) lives and works in Beijing. Since 2000 he has regularly shown his work in China, the U.S. and Europe in private galleries, museums and institutional centers. Exhibitions include Open Art Platform at the Performance Art Festival, 2000, Constructed Reality - Beijing/Hong Kong Conceptual Photography at the Hong Kong Arts Centre, Scar - Chinese Conceptual Photography at the Exhibition Hall of Capital Normal University, 2001, and Flying - Performance, Photography, Videos, Beijing Red Square, 2002.
Abroad he has been included in shows such as Mois de la Photo. Histories de Chine in Auxerre, France, 2002, China Art Now. Out of the Red at the FlashArt Museum in Italy and the Prague Biennial, 2003, Between Past and Future. New Photography and Video from China in ICP, Asia Society, New York and Smart Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art of Chicago, Officina Asia at Galleria d'Arte Moderna Cesena, Bologna Italy. Other recent exhibitions include Tiananmen, in Paris, and MMAC Japan, Artificial Merriment Melbourne Australia, 2004, and Between Past and Future at the Seattle Art Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 2005.
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