Internationally known for his amazing photo-performances, Li Wei stages his body in contemporary landscapes and creates the illusion of gravity-defying situations that are dangerous and humorous at the same time.

Floating in the air, on the top of a skyscraper, or falling upside down from the sky, with his head embedded into the ground, the Chinese artist doesn’t uses computer montages, but mobilise cranes, scaffoldings and metal wires to achieve his acrobatic images.

Li Wei’s art is a difficult process mixing acrobatics and photography. His work questions our perceptions of social spaces and expresses a need of freedom: it draws out the fine line between reality and fantasy and points it out to the audience.

For this exhibition, Galerie Paris-Beijing shows a large selection of photo-performances Li Wei has staged between 2003 and 2013, in China and worldwide.

Li Wei was born in 1970 in the Hubei province and moved to Beijing in 1993, where he actually lives. In 1996, he met the avant-gardist group of the Beijing East Village, such as Zhu Ming and Zhang Huan, and began performing in the public space. Li Wei’s artwork has been exhibited in Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America. The most recent group and solo exhibitions include Venice Biennale (2013), Parc de la Villette, Paris (2012) and Rencontres d’Arles (2007).

*image (left)
courtesy of the artist and Galerie Paris-Beijing