Arthub Favorite: Week 80
Li Ran: Life of the Pilgrim
Opening: 2017 December 2nd, 15:00-18:00
Duration: 2017 December 3rd – 2018 January 26th
Venue: ShanghART Beijing, 261 Cao Chang Di, Airport Side Rd., Chaoyang District, Beijing, China
ShanghART Beijing is pleased to present Li Ran’s first solo exhibition at the gallery, Life of the Pilgrim , opening on 2nd December, 2017. This exhibition showcases the artist’s latest video, sculptures and painting works.
The exhibition centers on the artist’s specific identity of Christians. The video work “Life of the Pilgrim”, which share the same name of the exhibition, is based on the artist’s great amount of photo collection, his personal writing and vocal imitation; the story follows the migration life and sectarian contradiction of Christians, all the clues are woven in a generational way with a déjà vu sense, as well as leading people’s attention to a reconstructed historical space-time. Instead of obscuring the original historical events, the artist frees them from the edge of the physical space of the boundary and political regionalization. He regains the shabby metaphors, translating and binding a rhetorical correspondence.
Another work in the exhibition, “Waiting for the New Suits”, took the reference sample of the Shanghai Garment Factory from spring of 1979 to early 80s after the reform and opening. As the artist put it: “Different from the situation in 77 and 78, the freedom of garment production was suddenly released, and the bulk of clothes were circulated in the market after imitation and production.” What co-located with the video are several deformed, dislocated, and mutilated limps sculptures, they appear in the spotlight partially and repeatedly. In another exhibition hall, sound and painting works that related to the subject will also be presented.
About Artist
Li Ran, 1986 born in Hubei, graduated from Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, Oil Painting Department with BFA in 2009. He now lives and works in Beijing. Li Ran was nominated for the “Future Generation Art Prize” at the Pinchuk Art Center in Kyiv, Ukraine (2017), and he received the Best Artist Award at the 4th Moscow International Youth Art Biennial (2014).
Main exhibitions includes: Clod Night, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA), Beijing（2017）; Future Generation Art Prize, Collateral Event of the 57th Venice Biennale, Palazzo Contarini Polignac, Venice, Italy（2017）; Museum no/off – Encounters with Pompidou, Center Pompidou-ESPACE, Pairs, France（2016）; Artists’ Film Club: Li Ran, Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London, England （2015）; Many Place at Once, CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, USA（2014）; Looking Forward, La Biennale de Montréal, Montreal, Canada （2014）; FORMER WEST: Documents, Constellations, Prospects, Haus der Kulturen der Welt(HKW), Berlin, Germany（2013）; ROUNDTABLE, The 9th Gwangju Biennale 2012, Gwangju, Korea（2012）etc.