Lights #7, 2007, Acrylic on Canvas by Li Shurui courtesy of Goedhuis Contemporary Gallery
Lights #5, 2007, Acrylic on Canvas by Li Shurui courtesy ofGoedhuis Contemporary Gallery
Lights #78, 2008, Acrylic on Canvas by Li Shurui courtesy of 82 Republic Gallery
Lights #80, 2008, Acrylic on Canvas byLi Shurui courtesy of 82 RepublicOne of Beijing's rising young art stars, Li Shurui is 25 years old and graduated, in 20004, with a degree from the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute's Oil Paint department. She currently resides in Beijing and is partnered with painter
Chen Jie. Additonal information on Chen Jie can be found via this
link.
"Seeing Mountains" installation images courtesy of Li Shurui &Long March SpaceHer art career started while she was an undergraduate with an installation, called "Seeing Mountains", of a long line of fabric cubes that floated across a lake in a remote part of Yunnan Province inhabited by a matriarchal ethnic minority tribe.
Untitled Lights, Acrylic on Canvas, 2007-2008 courtesy of Li Shurui
Untitled Lights, Acrylic on Canvas, 2007-2008 courtesy of Li ShuruiShe then developed into large scaled air brushed abstract paintings with a vague international familiarity, but at a recent gallery group show, she had an instillation work consisting of an open elevator stuck between floors illuminated by flourescent lights.
This focus on lights illustrates Ms. Li's obsession with light, especially synthetic lights, manifesting in how her paintings are painstakingly recreated from photographs, enlarged into abstract kaleidescopic images. Examples illustrative of this work are the images at the top of the posting and directly above this paragraph.
Li Shurui photographed by Natalie Behring courtesy of the New York Times/IHTWhen asked in a recent article interview with
The International Tribune/
New York Times on who inspires her, she mentions "seventh-century ruler Wu Zetian, who through a combination of brains, beauty, unsparing ambition and tenacious hard work, became China's first and only female empress".
By stating such a person as an ispiration does show that Ms. Li is a feminist by nature, even though she has stated that "she is still too young, still too much in the stage of discovering herself, to figure out whether she considers herself a feminist or not."
You can read the IHT/NY Times Article "China's Female Artists Quietly Emerge" via this
link and view the accompanying photo slide show via this
link.
Ms. Li is represented by the
82 Republic Gallery in Hong Kong and by
Godehuis Gallery inernationally (Beijing, London and New York).
