Liu Shuishi | Retrospective
ON VIEW
September 8 - October 13, 2018
LOCATION
521 W 23rd St
New York, NY
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Liu Shuishi (b. 1962, China) is a contemporary painter and installation artist based in New York. Liu entered the Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts in 1987. However, he felt at odds with the Academy’s classical training and left after two years to teach art classes. It was not until 2007 when he began reading about the self and consciousness through popular philosophers like Nietzsche, Immanuel Kant and Sigmund Freud, that Liu developed a taste for modern and contemporary art. Philosophy became the primary driving force behind Liu's artistic practice. His subject matter includes the process of thinking, the pursuit of absolute beauty, and concepts of self-reflection and self-awareness.
Liu is quiet, meditative, and a voracious consumer of philosophy. Following the prompting of emotion, he brings his innermost thoughts and feelings outwards in painting. Liu follows in the tradition of revealing the journey of man alone, propelled into existence, bound by ardent emotion. His gestural and richly textured oil paintings have been highly acclaimed and internationally collected.
In 2009, Liu exhibited in Paris at the Salon du Carrousel du Louvre Paris and at Art en Capital, where he was awarded a silver prize by Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. In 2015, Liu participated in the 56th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale. He has enjoyed solo exhibitions at the Zhuhai Museum, Zhuhai, China; Today Art Museum, Beijing, China; and the Macao Foundation, Macao, China. He has participated in group exhibitions at the GuangZhou Museum of Art and at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing, one of China's largest art museums. His works are in the collections of the Macao Foundation, the Chinese Peoples' Institute of Foreign Affairs, and former US State Secretary Henry Kissinger. The artist lives and works in New York.
Liu Shuishi’s powerful work reflects the artist’s ongoing concern with modernity's complex history and the isolation and instability of contemporary life. Influenced by both Western philosophers, as well as German and Abstract Expressionism, Shuishi renders figures with large heads and exaggerated features in highly gestural, bold brushstrokes. Chinese traditional art and calligraphy ally with the thick impasto paint strokes to make works rich in formal presentation as well as content. His work has been a lifelong exploration of the history of western and eastern art combined with his profound connection to the history of philosophy. Highly reflective of traditional Chinese brushstroke calligraphy, his style combines this with bold, gestural and painterly brushstrokes that sweep across the canvas creating a colorful visual fantasy that keeps your eye moving around the canvas. The abstract marks, gestures and thick impasto paint strokes relate to figures and objects, but in an elusive and ambiguous style. Rather, the artist is focused on the energy within the mark or gesture. The significance of his painting is his ability to perceive human nature from the inside out, to find the truth of existence through a highly original style of painting.
This exhibition showcases paintings that reflect the artist’s oeuvre since his transition from more traditional Chinese landscape painting to his unique brand of existential expressionism.
Shuishi exhibited at the 56th International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale, the Salon Du Carrousel du Louvre in 2009, The Grand Palace Paris in 2009, National Art Museum of China Beijing in 2006, along with scores of gallery exhibitions in China and abroad. While Shuishi has shown extensively over the past 15 plus years, this exhibition is the first time a large body of work is available for presentation, as well as private and museum acquisition.
