LIU YUE

ShanghART Beijing is pleased to present artist Liu Yue’s Solo Exhibition - Maxim on November 19th, 2016, marking the artist’s first solo exhibition in ShanghART Gallery. This exhibition is focused on the artist’s research of human cognition executed in his art practice since 2005 with the work Maximized Uniqueness, 07.

Liu Yue’s practice is primarily centered on the materials for photography, and devoted in analyzing the materiality of images, as well as the human cognitive habit of images, light and forms. The seemingly simple representation of the image conceals its often surprising and unimaginable power on our perception once we engage in in-depth inquiry. He is apt at translating everyday objects into other forms, as well as questioning the essence of the object. He dissolves artificially added specific notions and meanings of the objective world, and unveils all the external factors in order to explore the ‘truth’, thus allowing thinking to occur without any preconception. The artist’s research on cognition, ‘paradox’ transpires throughout this process, although the ‘answer’ may be uncovered, it would be nonetheless rejected by the following ‘question’. For the artist, this contradictory process is believed to be the most real and fascinating. Liu Yue, like a programmer of computer viruses, is first infected by it before adopting his most resistant means to fight it.

Maxim is the summarized fragments that had been integrated from multiple dimensions. It’s the goal and direction people’s imaginations incline, instead of their reality. Maximized Uniqueness series departs from the artist’s sensibility, and is allowed to self-destructively expand in order to reach a new parameter. In Maximized Uniqueness, 07, the shifting axial of large format cameras, changing the angle of perspective in the original image (img. 1) and the adjustment of its forms and directions, are aimed at reshaping the original into a perfect and near- standardized regular shape (the final image, img. 2). In this process the conditioned norms had been adopted and then reinvented, whereby to engender new paradox. Thereon, this perfectly shaped forms intended to reach standardization and its paradoxical details are inevitably presented before their viewers.

Liu Yue, born in 1981, Shanghai. In 2005, he graduated from Oil Painting Department of the Fine Arts College of Shanghai University, is currently living and working in Shanghai. His recent exhibitions include, Mass - Liu Yue Solo Project at Local Space, Beijing (2016); The Gentle Slope - Liu Yue Solo Project at AM Art Space, Shanghai (2015); Nonfigurative at Shanghai Twenty-First Century Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai (2015), Anthem - Xiao Ming & Xiao Hong at AM Art Space, Shanghai (2012); Echo - Liu Yue Solo Exhibition at OFOTO Gallery, Shanghai (2012); Alexandria Biennale, Alexandra, Italy (2011); Photoquai Photo Biennale at Musee de Quai Branly, France (2011); Absolute Zero - Liu Yue Photography Exhibition at OFOTO Gallery, Shanghai (2008) and etc.