Liu Wei (artist) - Artistic Style

Artistic Style

In an interview from 2010, Liu Wei was asked, "How would you define your work?" to which he replied, "I couldn't. There's no way to define it."

Rather than beginning with a material or a technique, Liu Wei beings his artistic endeavors with ideas and then considers how best to express them. When he becomes comfortable and "fluent" with a particular type of work and no longer finds any obstacles or problems within that material type and the style it achieves, he changes his materials and styles.

Yet Liu Wei readily admits that there is no way to completely "kill" the idea of style. "Actually, there is always still something beneath," he has said, "But I could never use some surface things – for example, the way lots of artists use a representative form, almost like a symbol or emblem – as a way to define my work, or to prove that I had a style of position." Liu Wei suggested that, much like physics, "when a structure is at rest, it no longer has any energy, but when the structure is broken, and its parts begin to move around again, it is filled with energy, power, and vitality." It is through continually moving from one style and material to another that Liu Wei perceives his artwork as maintaining interest.