LIU WEIJIAN

‘Light’ is the starting point for LIU Weijian to enter the painting world, and it is also the element for Liu Weijian to recreate and reproduce the scenes and environmental atmosphere filtered by memory in the changing city. ‘Light from a Distance’ is mostly Liu Weijian’s reverie and yearning for the unknown destination during the trip. ‘Room with Recollections’ links private traces of life to each person’s emotional memories. ‘A View without Spectators” and “When the Streetlights are Illuminated’ respectively show the day and night of the city in the eyes of the artist, like a no-man’s theatre that plays an endless and ordinary story. As the story unfolds with light, it ends, but we are left contemplating and comprehending.

In recent years, Liu Weijian maintained his romantic style, treating himself as the protagonist and directly integrating the encounter moments and emotional feelings in life into the paintings. Through his keen perception and plain and hidden visual tone, he captures and retains the wandering light and colour on the canvas. At the same time, the image is transformed into an ideal way to explore his individual life and inner self-cognition, and invisible loneliness is visualised - nihility, mystery, and poetry, constantly advancing our deeper review and reflection on the vitality of the contemporary and the inclusiveness and integration of the macro world.

About the artist

LIU Weijian (b.1981) lives and works in Shanghai. He graduated from Shanghai Normal University of Art (2005).

Liu Weijian has defined his cold and recondite way of ‘narration’ through his early works: he wears a cold neutral “image” mask and takes it as the root of his ‘conceptual painting’. With his cold touch and melancholy feelings, Liu Weijian’s work deals with many of the current issues he and his contemporaries think about daily and creates a feeling of constant movement and of unfinished business. After that, the ever-changeful themes and painting styles are the self-evolution with the increase of ages, expansion of horizons, and the changes of social experiences of Liu Weijian. ‘Every once a while I will go to some places, somewhere nothing special, no particular choice, just like the randomness of life...endless walking makes me get closer to the conception between “people” and “me”.’ In this highly symbolism tour, painting is the ideal way to express his self-cognition-seeking journey, and his works are the rebuild of different memory fragments.

Selected exhibitions: Beyond 2003-2023, Mingyuan Art Museum,Shanghai(2023); Liu Weijian: The Stage With Light, Art Museum of Guangming Culture and Art Center, Shenzhen (2022); Liu Weijian: On The Way, Barn for Contemporary Art, Shenzhen (2018); Turning Point - Contemporary Art in China Since 2000, Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai; China 8, Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Germany (2015); The Idea Before Sunrise, Galería Yusto, Giner, Malaga, Spain (2012); Liu Weijian: Farewell my Country, Gallery Louis Vuitton Maison, Hong Kong (2011); China Power Station: Part II, Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Norway (2007), etc. His works are also selected into the collection of important institutes: Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai; Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Norway; DSL Collection, Paris, France, etc.