Liu Wei stands among his work Love It, Bite It in his solo show Color in Beijing, where the exhibition rooms are filled with large installations. Photo provided to China Daily
Liu also displays a new addition to his iconic Love It, Bite It series. He was inspired to create the works after seeing his dog chewing an ox hide toy. In the new work, he seeks to explore the connection between animals' desire for food and man's lust for power.
In 2006, Liu created his first Love It, Bite It installations. With the same ox hide material for making chewing toys, he re-created world-famous venues, such as the Pentagon and Tate Modern museum, touching upon the issues of prestige and interest.
In the latest piece now displayed in the UCCA lobby, Liu has employed the forms and elements of religious architecture. The work looks like he has disassembled a religious building into several components and restructured them in a different order.
"I don't think art is some sort of knowledge. It isn't produced to lecture people," he says. "I wish to remove from my works, any traces of existing knowledge and then restore their most elemental status."
Gao Shiming, a professor with the Hangzhou-based China Academy of Art, where Liu studied, says the exhibits speak to Liu's observations of the community surrounding his studio.
"It is like a divide between the city and the countryside. Local residents do not live an industrial life, or a globalized one. They make almost everything themselves, like an artist does his work. Liu collected their daily waste to produce his works.
"He used the magic of art to piece these objects back together, in a new order he reconstructed."
Recognized as a success story among the post-1970 generation of Chinese artists, Liu has been commended for his breakthroughs despite the shadows of "cynical realism" and "political pop" from the previous generations on many of his peers.
"Liu and other contemporary artists have found quite a big possibility of expression for Chinese art. They have opened a door. To what, people are not yet quite sure. But it's only a start," says Pi Li, senior curator at Hong Kong's M+ contemporary art museum.
If you go
10 am-7 pm, Tuesday to Sunday, through April 17. UCCA, 798 Art District, 4 Jiuxianqiao Road, Chaoyang district. 010-5780-0200.
