Now living in Hangzhou, China, Li Qing began his most important artistic period, the Finding Differences series, in 2005. In this period, Li Qing began a new phase of his studies as a master’s student. Li Qing’s focus on the details of daily life was instinctual. This instinct led him for a need for more systematic concepts with which to engage in effective organization of these quotidian details. The common sense aspect of the quotidian experience often leads people to forget it out of habit. In the conceptual world, this habitual thing can be wrapped up by “numbness”, but in the personal realm, it gets recreated through a “play” method. Because of this, Li Qing’s artistic philosophy in this period entered into a more direct proposition: how to use a “game” method to resist the “numbed” aesthetic and universal notions:
My Finding Differences series seems to have also started with this evasive narrative aspect. People who have played this before know that it is only a game, nothing more than a way to pass the time. My recent work has also made me feel as if I am a game creator, using an ancient labor method to painstakingly create a simple game. I would rather encounter those people who like to compare reality – they’re willing to view these pictures as a comic with only two frames, linking together different stories, or to view them as a pair of mutually verifying and disputing photographs, and to try to figure out which one is more believable – I want to encounter them like the hunter wants to encounter his prey, even placing the thoughts I have the moment that they fall into the trap as one of my greatest joys. The picture is a lens. It is not about imitation, but refraction. Within it you can see what you wish – a reverent, grand and passionate narrative that shines on the great emotions of the world or a trivial, self- pleasing and disheartened tiny sentiment that focuses on private details. The moment that the veils fall one by one, the day of siege from all sides, when something of the world peeks out from the eternal fog, that is why I love Magritte . After things settle, everything is once again a game. Only time is the true fog, just as it is for me.