Curator Charles Merewether states, “[Li Xinping creates] elaborate scenes in which love and war seem inextricably tied to one another; a heightening of the senses, their destruction, their intoxication and celebration: figures and matter merge and separate and merge again – to make love, to make war – the union of bodies.” In a Time of Love and War: Li Xinping traces the development of the artist’s career through the thread of sensuality and the warring and dialogue of forces. The exhibition showcases the dynamic, multilateral directions in Li’s art practice of more than a decade, featuring work from 2002 to 2014. 

Scenes of leisure, gaiety and figures rejoicing in a world of harmony and sensual pleasure of the natural world are exemplified in works such as Waltz in the Afternoon (2003) in which the influence 19th century French artists such as Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard on Li is particularly pronounced. In works such as Fan (2007), however, the sensuality is no longer tied to earthly pleasure, but rather a floating, heavenly or mythopoetic space. Li’s engagement with Chinese cultural history, particularly the ancient Chinese book of Classics of Mountains and Seas perhaps explains this change in trajectory; Li states, “What fascinates me the most is the mythical presentation of the heavens and texts which recorded the Chinese imagination, hallucination and mirage-like images.”

From 2009 – 2011, there are no figures or bodies in Li’s work, but an interplay of pure volumetric forms – the paintings suggest something primitive, elemental like the cosmic forms of nature, but also the artist’s interest in the balance of aesthetic and mathematical logics, as later developed in works such as Yixing Theory (2013), and Riemannian Space (2014). What is depicted then becomes the dialogue of forces, the logic that is imbedded within the natural world, and ultimately, the celebration of balance.

In A Time of Love And War: Li Xinping showcases the different turning points in the artist’s practice, tracing both the Asian and European influences on his work, with the hopes to expand the context in which the works of the seminal Chinese painter’s works can be understood. 

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Li Xinping (b. 1959, Beijing, China) is an artist and scholar. He has been featured in a number of solo exhibitions including Machine in the Body (Osage Gallery, Hong Kong, 2011), Trans+Fusion (Osage Gallery, Singapore, 2008), Of Harvest Moons and Enchanted Lovers: Chinese Myths and Legends (Osage Gallery, Hong Kong, 2005), as well as a number of group exhibitions, including, Oriental Visual --- Sino-South Korea Contemporary Art (Beijing World Art Museum, Beijing, China, 2007), SUSI: Key to Chinese Art Today – Exploration & Discovery (National Museum of the Philippines, Manila, Philippines, 2006) and Enlightenment from the Ancient State of Lou Lan (10th National Art Exhibition, China, 2004). Li currently lives and works in Beijing, China.

ABOUT THE CURATOR

Charles Merewether was born in Scotland and earned his Ph.D in Art History from the University of Sydney. He is an art historian and writer on modernism and contemporary art who has taught at universities in the United States, Mexico and South America, Australia and Singapore. He was Collections Curator at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles from 1994 to 2004, Artistic Director and Curator for the 2006 Sydney Biennale, Deputy Director for the Cultural District, Saadiyat Island, Abu Dhabi from 2007 to 2008, and Director at Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore (ICAS), LASALLE College of the Arts from 2010 to 2013. Since 1991, he has curated a number of major exhibitions of major artists from across South America and Asia, including Central Asia. He has published extensively articles and books including Ai Weiwei: Under Construction (2008) and Ai Weiwei: Beijing, Venice, London, Herzog & de Meuron (2008) and After Memory: The Art of Milenko Prvački – 40 Years (2013). He has also co-edited After the Event: New Perspectives on Art History (2010), Art, Anti-Art, Non-Art: Experimentations in the public sphere in postwar Japan 1950-1970, (2007). 

*Image courtesy of the artist and Osage Gallery