PROVENANCE: Jack Tilton Gallery, New York Private Collection, USA

One of the leading figures in China’s “Cynical Realism” (“Popi”) movement, Liu Wei has for many years now exerted a considerable influence over the development of contemporary Chinese art through his unique artistic lexicon. In Liu’s works, the propaganda and educational function of art is shifted away from the mainstream, adulatory depiction of big events advocated by officialdom towards a focus on the “meaningless” reality of the self and the personal experience of the individual. What might seem at first glance to have been serious, hackneyed subject matter is smoothly and efficiently overturned by Liu to become something comic or satirical, full of ironic mockery of both history and the present. When looking back over Liu Wei’s artistic career, there is a noticeable absence of any consistent formula or pattern; everything comes straight from the heart. The combination of a rapidly changing style and relatively limited output means that Liu has hardly ever repeated himself.

Starting from the “Revolutionary Family” series in the early 1990s, with their “group photos” of the dead-eyed, deformed-mouthed members of a military family, through the “Swimming” series with its images of Chairman Mao without his mystical “halo,” to the deformed, suppurating figures depicted in recent works such as “No Smoking,” “Pork” and “You Like Me,” every change in Liu Wei’s style has seemed to case aside his own past work in a bold, new program of experimentation. As a result, Liu’s use of line can be precise or blurred, and his art can be realist or expressionist. In the late 1990s, Liu began to gradually move away from “political pop art” and the use of set symbols; he shifted his attention away from politics and Chinese history towards the tiny details of everyday life. Liu uses the artist’s instinct to realize his art, an instinct that has its roots in the realities of life. As Liu himself once put it: “In my paintings, I respect my own psychological reactions; I use my own methods to interpret the scenes that present themselves to me. Anyone who looks at one of my paintings can tell immediately that I painted it. An artist needs to paint with feeling if they are going to move the viewer, and if they want to produce something that can really be called beautiful.”

Liu Wei was one of the first Chinese contemporary artists to have their work featured in major international exhibitions. Liu’s paintings depict the changes in young people’s values that emerged in China’s Reform Era, reflecting the pronounced impact that changes in the political and economic environment had on ordinary people’s lives. A focus on material desires runs through much of Liu’s recent work; another underlying theme is an interest in how the human figure has traditionally been portrayed. After the “Revolutionary Family” and “Swimming” series, Liu transferred his attention away from the military and political personages of the Revolution towards anonymous human figures. The painting “Who Am I” included in this auction is one of Liu’s finest works from this period. On a gray background, a figure with a blurry, misshapen face stands erect in the center of the scene. The bright, colorful (yet blurred) bouquet of pink flowers at the bottom of the canvas catches the viewer’s attention, while the smoking skull seems to complement the human figure in the middle of the painting. The picture has a strongly layered composition; the seemingly random streaks of paint actually provide an “orderly transition,” creating a sense of graffiti- like bantering discourse, a feeling of decadence and nihilism.

Judging from the hairstyle of the figure shown in the painting, it appears to be a portrait of Chairman Mao that has had the features distorted and been given a disfigured face and the expression of a simpleton. The bright, protruding, yellow portion of the face resembles a suppurating pustule; this putrid image appears to represent the artist’s sense of disappointment at the spiritual degradation accompanying China’s rapid transformation into a capitalist, consumerist society. The counter-posing of the flowers and the skull in the lower part of the canvas is thought provoking; it seems that, while the great man whose image is positioned above the “altar” may have already lost any significance within people’s spiritual world, he still holds a position of authority sufficient to warrant offerings of flowers. The placing of the cigarette-smoking skull among the blossoms adds a particularly mystical touch to the painting. A set of Chinese and English signs/slogans have been scrawled onto the middle of the canvas: “Wo shi shui (Who am I?)” in Chinese, and “Who am I?” “No Smoking” and “No Fire” in English. “Who am I?” represents the self-reflection of the figure shown in the painting, but also the artist’s own questioning of the social values of an age in which people appear to have lost their way. The relationship between the picture and the words reflects the intense, in-depth exploration and thought characteristic of Liu Wei’s works from the early 1990s; as such, the words enhance the overall effect of the work.