Sigg Swiss

Home > Trekking > Sigg Swiss

August 27th, 2008 admin Leave a comment Go to comments

Sigg Swiss

Liu Wei Artworks, Paintings and Exhibitions at the Saatchi Gallery

Liu Weiâ€™s practice is uniquely varied. Working in video, installation, drawing, sculpture, and painting, there is no stylistic tendency which ties his work together. Rather Liu perceives the artistâ€™s function as a responsibility of unmitigated, uncensored expression, tied to neither ideology nor form. Throughout Liuâ€™s work lies an engagement with peripheral identity in the context of wider culture; his works often describe a sentiment of excess, corruption, and aggression reflective of cultural anxiety.In China, you don't find a painter, and a sculptor, and a video artist, but rather one artist who is working on painting, sculpture, photography, video and (why not?) performance all at the same time. Liu Wei in Beijing to select works for my show in Turin, not only beautiful cityscape paintings but also architectural models of famous buildings, like St. Peter's Cathedral and the Empire State Building, made from the same rubber used to make fake dog bones. In Europe, an artist that looks for inspiration in both a pet shop and the early work of Gerhard Richter would most likely be dismissed as lacking a consistent point of view.

Liu Wei paintings has been seen to characterize the eraâ€™s pervasive feeling of malaise. With renowned works such as New Generation (1990), Liu recycles the iconic image of Mao in an ironic interpretation of Chinaâ€™s current post Cultural Revolution state. Liu has been active in exhibitions such as the touring exhibitions China's New Art, Post-1989, Hong Kong, Sydney and Vancouver, the 1998-99 exhibition Inside Out: New Chinese Art, New York and San Francisco. Liu has also participated in the 46th Venice Biennale in 1995, and has had solo exhibitions at the Jack Tilton Gallery in New York, USA in 1999 and the Urs Meile Gallery, Switzerland in 2004. The word on Chinese art right now is "Buy!" but he was not convinced that we Westerners really understand what's going on there. Ten years ago, a few Chinese artists, like Chen Zen or Huang Yong Ping, appeared on the West's radar screen, satisfying a certain outdated "Orientalist" craving among some collectors. People like Uli Sigg, the former Swiss ambassador to China, who counts some 1,500 pieces of Chinese and Asian art in his collection, and another Swiss citizen, Lorenz Helbling, who opened his gallery, ShanghART, in China more than a decade ago, are reaping the profits of their foresight. But now Western collectors and dealers are descending on China like a swarm of annoying and aimless flies. Actually, today's burgeoning Chinese art world depends very marginally, if at all, on the gallery establishment in New York and London. Huge crowds may jam the Miami Basel and Frieze art fairs, but those numbers are nothing compared with the potential size of the art market within China itself.