Liu Wei (artist) - Early Career

Early Career

Liu Wei has stated that he "really began doing art after graduated in 1996." Between 1996 and 1998, he experienced a post-graduate period of transition in which he was producing idealistic oil paintings. In 1998 and 1999, he also began producing installation works as well as video projects. The majority of these video projects were related to the human body.He described these works as impulsive and intuitive; works of a still young and impulsive artist.

After he graduated from the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, he returned to his hometown, where he turned from painting to experiments in other types of media, such as videography. He participated in several DIY exhibitions while supporting himself as an editor at Beijing Youth Daily. In 1999, he was involved with a group of subversive artists known as the “Post-Sense Sensibility” group and participated in an exhibit known as “Post-Sense, Sensibility, Alienated Bodies, and Delusion.” Then in 2003, he was invited by Hou Hanru to participate in the Fifth Shenzhen International Public Art Exhibition, which was to be called “The Fifth System: Public Art in the Age of Post-planning.” Before, Liu Wei had only worked collaboratively with other student artists. This was his first opportunity to create a solo project with an internationally known curator. At the exhibition, he initially meant to procure and transport an airplane boarding bridge to the exhibition site. However, the endeavor was too expensive and too ambitious and never came to pass. This was his first encounter with “system” and its ability to impede on his work. He has cited the mishap as a turning point in his artistic career towards a more pragmatic approach. By 2006, Liu Wei began producing the kinds of works that would characterize his art for the next decade: art concerned with objects of daily life and the systems that govern everyday existence.