Liu Jianhua: Square

Pace Beijing is pleased to announce the solo exhibition of Liu Jianhua Square from September 20 to November 8. This is the artist’s first attempt to mobilize the entire space of the grand exhibition hall of Pace Beijing. The work shown at the exhibition demonstrates his long-term interest in the field of beauty. It’s also an experiment into the reality of the present social environment. This can be recognised throughout the artist’s artistic creation as a neo-traditional attitude.

Since 2008, Liu Jianhua’s focus has been the exploration of a creative way that is different from picturing the direct and realistic scene. In order to fully reflect the purity of works in nature, the artist adopted the ancient porcelain craft, which is accompanied by consideration of the contemporary world.

The exhibition shows the ambivalence of pure elements incisively and vividly. A variety of material flows and powers shift in this seemingly ordered arrangement. The artist’s intervention and containment of space, and the freely spilled details, enable the viewer to think more deeply about the work.

Liu Jianhua was born in 1962 in Ji’an, Jiangxi Province, China. In 1989, he graduated from Fine Art of Sculpture at the Jingdezhen Ceramics Institute. He lives and works in Shanghai, China. Since 2004 he has taught Fine Art of Sculpture in Shanghai University. Liu Jianhua is one of China’s best known sculptural and installation artists whose primary materials are porcelain and mixed media. He was raised in Jiangxi Province where he spent 14 years learning the ceramic and porcelain craft at Jingdezhen’s factory. He graduated in Fine Art of Sculpture at the Jingdezhen Ceramics Institute in 1989, and within a contemporary context, he started his own experimental practices. Liu’s porcelain and mixed media works reflect the economic and social changes in China as well as the problems that follow suit. His Regular Fragile series, first shown at the Chinese Pavilion, Venice Biennale in 2003, is composed of porcelain replicas of daily life that privilege appearance and symbolism over function. In 2008, he shifted his previous close and direct attention on the problems emerging in China from globalisation and sharp social changes to “no meaning, no content.”