Buyer’s Guide // Art
Liu Wei, Purple Air, Oil on canvas, 2008, 300 x 540 cm
Beijing-based artist Liu Wei has mastered a wide range of media and techniques including photography, painting, sculpture and installation. Found objects are an inherent part of his art and he reworks and transforms them into sculptures and installations. He is well known for his “Purple Air” painting series in which he shows us the city as a dynamic and vital force, where nature still has a role to play. The reproduced paintings reveal abstracted patterns of upward reaching vertical lines that represent the buildings of the future. Liu also uses computer software to produce a multitude of images from which he selects the best for his final works. Yang Zhenzhong has constructed a multi-faceted oeuvre that consists mainly of photography and videos. Early in his career he metaphorically represented the nuclear Chinese family by photographing several combinations of a rooster, a hen, and their chickens to articulate his interest for family policy and social planning. He focuses on the intrinsic disharmony and the
Yang Zhenzhong, Passage, Video, 2012, 14 min and 19 sec
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discrepancies observed in Chinese society. Passage is a recent video that pertains to time, space, and the contrast between the long and the flat spaces of the screen. It is an aesthetic metaphor of life and death, an ultimate achievement by one of the few Chinese video artists who can truly rival the great Yang Fudong. Alongside her husband, Song Dong, Yin Xiuzhen forms the preeminent power couple in contemporary Chinese art. She is famous for her portable cities — suitcases filled with discarded fabric and equipped with speakers that give each “city” its own soundtrack. Her main issues concern the construction of history and memory. The installation “One Sentence” consists of 108 objects, numbered stainless steel tins filled with clothes from various friends and arranged in a circular configuration. The title refers to the words of a sentence that form a unit like the tins, which are numbered and stamped on the lid. Inside the tins the clothes produce a beautiful abstract portrait of colors and patterns.
Yin Xiuzhen, One sentence, Installation with used clothes and stainless steel, 2011, Dimensions variable