Arthub Favorite: Week 47

After the crazy art week in Shanghai, we would like to shift our focus to Beijing. ShanghART Beijing will present Liu Yue’s solo exhibition ‘Maxim’.

Duration: November 20th – February 15th
Venue: ShanghART Beijing | 260 Cao Chang Di, Old Airport Rd. Chaoyang District, Beijing

ShanghART Beijing will present artist Liu Yue’s Solo Exhibition – Maxim – on November 19th, 2016, marking the artist’s first solo exhibition in the ShanghART Gallery. This exhibition is focused on the artist’s research of human cognition executed in his art practice since 2005 with the work ‘Maximized Uniqueness, 07’.

Liu Yue’s practice is primarily centered on materials for photography, and devoted to analyzing the materiality of images, as well as the human cognitive habits of images, light and forms. The seemingly simple representation of the image conceals its often surprising and unimaginable power over our perception once we engage in an in-depth inquiry. He is apt at translating everyday objects into other forms, as well as questioning the essence of the object. He dissolves artificially added specific notions and meanings of the objective world, and unveils all the external factors in order to explore the “truth”, thus allowing thinking to occur without any preconception. The artist’s research on cognition, “paradox” transpires throughout this process, although the “answer” may be uncovered, it would be nonetheless rejected by the following “question”. For the artist, this contradictory process is believed to be the most real and fascinating. Liu Yue, like a programmer of computer viruses, is first infected by it before adopting his most resistant means to fight it.

Maxim is the summarized fragments that had been integrated from multiple dimensions. It’s the goal and direction that people’s imaginations incline, instead of their reality. The Maximized Uniqueness series departs from the artist’s normal sensibility, and is allowed to self-destructively expand in order to reach a new parameter. In Maximized Uniqueness 07, the shifting axial of large format cameras, changing the angle of perspective in the original image (img. 1) and the adjustment of its forms and directions, are aimed at reshaping the original into a perfect and near- standardized regular shape (the final image, img. 2). In this process the conditioned norms had been adopted and then reinvented, whereby to engender new paradox. Thereon, these perfectly shaped forms are intended to reach standardization and its paradoxical details are inevitably presented before their viewers.

For additional details, please click here.

About Artist
Liu Yue, born in 1981, Shanghai. In 2005, he graduated from the Oil Painting Department of the Fine Arts College of Shanghai University, is currently living and working in Shanghai. His recent exhibitions include, Mass – Liu Yue Solo Project at Local Space, Beijing (2016); The Gentle Slope – Liu Yue Solo Project at AM Art Space, Shanghai (2015); Nonfigurative at Shanghai Twenty-First Century Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai (2015), Anthem – Xiao Ming & Xiao Hong at AM Art Space, Shanghai (2012); Echo – Liu Yue Solo Exhibition at OFOTO Gallery, Shanghai (2012); Alexandria Biennale, Alexandra, Italy (2011); Photoquai Photo Biennale at Musee de Quai Branly, France (2011); Absolute Zero – Liu Yue Photography Exhibition at OFOTO Gallery, Shanghai (2008) and etc.