LI LIAO

The Fortune Exhibition of Li’s Family House began in 2020, a project organised and hosted by artist Li Liao, invites a Fengshui master as its “Fengshui curator” and commissions artists to make works on this occasion. The exhibition has been held twice previously at Li Liao’s home in Shenzhen. The current edition of the show is co-organised by Li Liao and WHITE SPACE BEIJING, held at the Beijing gallery space. The original layout, details, appearance, and orientation of Li’s house will be restaged in the exhibition space on a 1:1 scale. This exhibition invites different “Fengshui curators” and artists’ participation from the previous two editions.

In “Mengzi - Li Lou I”, it is said that “Without the compass and square, you cannot form squares and circle”; “Guanzi – Xing Shi Jie” also states that “If you adopt the rules to make squares and circles, you will succeed; if you measure the length according to the standard, you will receive; if you rule the people by the law, you will obtain peace.” In their respective systems, “Fengshui” and “contemporary art” are initially indeterminate media, vague in scope, and constructed by numerous theories. Moreover, the Fengshui masters and artists share somewhat different understandings and practices in their fields. The gray area drawn by ambiguous boundaries seems to create baseless actions and setbacks while providing the practitioners’ freedom and power to expand under the rules they abide by.

In the Fortune Exhibition of Li’s Family House, two seemingly unrelated rules and outcomes, “Fengshui” and “contemporary art,” intersect under predetermined conditions, framing and constructing a more complex field of “Fengshui - Art” – intertwined with each other. Regarding space, the “Li’s family house” and the “WHITE SPACE BEIJING,” defined by geographical coordinates, three-dimensional scale, orientation, material texture, functionality, and other attributes that are either imaginary or real, will be momentarily switched during the exhibition period. With little or lack of understanding of each other, the “Fengshui curator” adopt the “Li’s Family House” at ” WHITE SPACE BEIJING” as a site to determine its Fengshui and provide guidance that will transform the Li’s Family House. On the other hand, the artists will create works with specific givens, device one’s abilities, and respond creatively based on the explicit or vague rules and requirements provided by the Fengshui curator.

With this, we warmly invite you to attend the Fortune Exhibition of Li’s Family House to witness what creative possibilities the Fengshui curator and the artists will present in this otherwise restricted creative context.