Gallery press release -
Zadok Gallery is located at 2534 North Miami Avenue (at 26th Street). www.zadokgallery.com
The work of rising Chinese art star Li Hui, on view from December 6, 2012 through February 18, 2013 at Miami’s Zadok Gallery, is collaboratively presented by Zadok and Manhattan’s Eli Klein Fine Art. Beijing-born and based, Li Hui, who has achieved acclaim for pushing the boundaries between art and technology, makes dramatic use of laser and LED lights in an elaborate visual metaphor composed of installations and sculptures that explores an old Jewish proverb: “Man thinks, God laughs.”
God is Laughing, a silicone and white, fiber optic hair sculpture of a gorilla, serves as an artistic avatar of Rodin’s bronze The Thinker, but with a visual twist. Ape, not man, contemplates universal truths from his silvery perch, thanks to wisdom imbued in him through God’s holy light. That light is represented by Cracked, which pierces the gallery’s darkness with a mesmerizing stream of crimson laser beams that shine down on an angled, cracked mirror, representing creation. The glowing form conjures optical effects that are simultaneously exhilarating and mystical.
The cool visual complement to Cracked is a translucent, acrylic racecar from Li Hui’s series. Illuminated from within with bluish LED lights, at first glance the sleek sculpture is yet another muscular icon of speed. Look again. Just as amber’s transparent fossil resin entraps vulnerable organisms, this vehicle encases a Jurassic-like skeleton. The conflated forms offer a poignant, visual conceit for oppositional concepts of evolution and extinction, nature and technology, ideas frequently explored by the artist. The notion is further explored in Captured the Rhino, a huge animal sculpture composed of stainless steel coils that ironically contradict the endangered species’ actual vulnerability.
Beyond its high-tech aesthetics of industrial materiality, Li Hui articulates that his work is informed by issues of eternity central to Eastern religious thought and philosophy. The artist is especially fascinated by the Zen concept of two colliding energies producing a third, an experiential phenomenon he seeks to produce for his audiences.
Li Hui was born in Beijing, China in 1973, and earned his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. His work has been exhibited in museum shows around the world including recent solo exhibitions “Transition,” Mannheimer Kunstverein, Mannheim, Germany (2010); “Who’s Afraid of Red, Amber and Green?” Museum Kunstlich in de Kunst, Eindhoven, The Netherlands (2010); “Reality Impalpable,” Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, Taiwan (2011) and “V,” Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China (2011).
