Eli Klein Fine Art and Zadok Gallery collaboratively presents the work of rising Chinese art star Li Hui, at Miami's Zadok Gallery. Beijing-born and based, Li Hui, who has achieved acclaim for pushing the boundaries between art and technology, makes dramatic use of laser and LED lights in an elaborate visual metaphor composed of installations and sculptures that explores an old Jewish proverb: "Man thinks, God laughs."
God is Laughing, a silicone and white, fiber optic hair sculpture of a gorilla, serves as an artistic avatar of Rodin's bronze The Thinker, but with a visual twist. Ape, not man, contemplates universal truths from his silvery perch, thanks to wisdom imbued in him through God's holy light. That light is represented by Cracked, which pierces the gallery's darkness with a mesmerizing stream of crimson laser beams that shine down on an angled, cracked mirror, representing creation. The glowing form conjures optical effects that are simultaneously exhilarating and mystical.
The cool visual complement to Cracked is a translucent, acrylic racecar from Li Hui’s series. Illuminated from within with bluish LED lights, at first glance the sleek sculpture is yet another muscular icon of speed. Look again. Just as amber's transparent fossil resin entraps vulnerable organisms, this vehicle encases a Jurassic-‐like skeleton. The conflated forms offer a poignant, visual conceit for oppositional concepts of evolution and extinction, nature and technology, ideas frequently explored by the artist. The notion is further explored in Captured the Rhino, a huge animal sculpture composed of stainless steel coils that ironically contradict the endangered species' actual vulnerability.
Beyond its high-‐tech aesthetics of industrial materiality, Li Hui articulates that his work is informed by issues of eternity central to Eastern religious thought and philosophy. The artist is especially fascinated by the Zen concept of two colliding energies producing a third, an experiential phenomenon he seeks to produce for his audiences.
