Pace Beijing is pleased to announce the solo exhibition of Liu Jianhua “Square” from September 20 to November 8. This is the artist’s first attempt to mobilize the entire space of the grand exhibition hall of Pace Beijing. The work shown at the exhibition transforms numerous into briefness, which demonstrates his long-term sense of form and the field of beauty. It’s also a thinking and experiment of the reality of the present social environment, which can also been recognized throughout the artist’s artistic creation as a neo-traditional attitude.
Since 2008, Liu Jianhua’s focus has been the exploration of a creative way that is different from picturing the direct and realistic scene. In order to fully reflect the purity of works in nature, the artist adopted the ancient porcelain craft, which is accompanied by the deep thinking and comprehension of the contemporary world. His work presents a concise that hardly leaves any space to imagine.
The exhibition shows the ambivalence of pure elements incisively and vividly. A variety of material flows antagonism and power-shifting in this seemingly ordered arrangement, and the shared technology of creating these materials provides the viewers a wonderful feeling of interdependence. The artist’s intervention and contain of space, and the freely spilled details, go beyond the distance that can make the viewer to think more deeply.
This exhibition is supported by Christian Dior.
About the Artist
Liu Jianhua is born in 1962 in Ji’an, Jiangxi Province, China. In 1989, he graduated from Fine Art of Sculpture at the Jingdezhen Ceramics Institute. He lives and works in Shanghai, China. From 2004 to present, he teaches in Fine Art of Sculpture in Shanghai University.
Liu Jianhua is one of China’s best known sculptural and installation artists whose primary materials are porcelain and mixed media. He was raised up in Jiangxi Province where he spent 14 years in learning the ceramic and porcelain craft at Jingdezhen’s factory. He graduated in Fine Art of Sculpture at the Jingdezhen Ceramics Institute in 1989, and within a contemporary context, he started his own experimental practices. Liu’s porcelain and mixed media works reflect the economic and social changes in China as well as the problems that follow suit. His Regular Fragile series, first shown at the Chinese Pavilion, Venice Biennale in 2003, is composed of porcelain replicas of daily that privilege appearance and symbolism over function. In 2008, he shifted his previous close and direct attention on the problems emerged in China from globalization and sharp social changes to “no meaning, no content”, which declared the fairly new exploration of his creation with works Untitled in 2008 and therefore formed a basic direction leading the perception of contemporary art creation.
Liu Jianhua’s works have been exhibited in The 1st Kiev Biennale of Contemporary Arts, 14th international Sculpture Biennale of Carrara, 17th Biennale of Sydney, Vancouver Biennale 2009-2011 (Canada), The 3rd Nanjing Triennial, 2nd Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, The 1st Singapore Biennale, The 6th Shanghai Biennale, Busan Biennale (South Korea), The 50th Biennale di Venezia China Pavilion and exhibitions held by institutions including UCCA(Beijing), Power Station of Art (Shanghai), Kunstmuseum Bern (Switzerland), Today Art Museum (Beijing), Shanghai Art Museum, Guangdong Museum of Art, Asian Art Museum (San Francisco), MoCA Shanghai, Staaliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (Germany), Shenzhen Art Museum, Guang Dong Art Museum, National Art Museum of China (Beijing), Groninger Museum (The Netherlands), Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien (Austria), Cobra Museum of Modern Art (The Netherlands), Kunst Der Gegenwart Sammlung Essl (Austria), Hamburg Art Center (Germany), Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), Irish Museum of Modern Art (Dublin), Tate Liverpool (Liverpool, London), Marseilles Museum of Contemporary Art (France), Center Pompidou (France) etc,.
Liu Jianhua’s works have been collected by Paris Warehouse, Hong Kong New World, Bergen Art Museum (Norway), Yuz Foundation, OCT Contemporary Art Terminal (Shanghai), Towada Art Center (Japan), Guggenheim Museum (New York), Z-Art Center (Shanghai), The Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney, Australia), Shanghai World Expo National Organizing Committee, Shanghai World Financial Center, Santander Bank Art Center (Spain), Today Art Museum (Beijing), Shenzhen Art Museum, Guangdong Museum of Art, Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture, Queensland Art Gallery (Australia), Kawara Museum (Japan), China Club (Hong Kong, China), Coca-cola (The United States), He Xiangning Art Musem (Shenzhen), Museum of Arts and Crafts in Frankfurt (Germany) etc, and by private collection.
Liu Jianhua has been awarded The 7th Award of Art China – Artist of the Year for Sculptural Art, Martell Artists of the Year, his work Dream is awarded The Grand Award of “Biennale of Contemporary Chinese Art Montpellier”(Montpellier, France), Merriment the 1st Chinese Contemporary Art Document Award (Wuhan, China).
