I love his way that is close to life and human.
It’s almost a year since Li Xiaofei’s solo exhibition “Stray into the World”. Indeed, he has strayed into the world for a long time.
It’s out of the stray that he brings meaning to his leisure and life by non-stop self-exploration. The morality of persistence carries him over the hardness of life. He ends up with a rich life experience including publishing books, teaching in the university, and also curating exhibitions for his students.
Though being a frequent guest of his studio, he seldom pays attention to my presence, neither do I say anything to him. We are bridged by silence.
As he works, he’s like a rope walker who lives on the site but has nothing to rely on. Willing to bear the risk and cost, he chooses to be a wanderer who tears the canvas with brushes while reaching for the peak of one’s soul.
Art calls not only for one’s body and heart, but also establishes a nation of religion in one’s life. In no case could one change the border of the nation, neither could one alter the devotion or religiosity. It’s a irreversible standpoint and determination regardless of any danger or uncertainty.
In my view, Li Xiaofei suffers from an incurable amnesia. Because he always transfers the images on his canvas into propositions against the viewers, the fate and also the society. He must have figured out the answers on the prescription all by himself.
His images make people feel melancholy. Moreover, he sincerely invokes the people to experience the wandering of meaning in contemporary society in the absence of God. The piano, sofa and chair discard their original context to a meaningless flight, expecting a pending re-union or a moving confession. God knows exactly what old story he intends to retrospect, which he then develops into a dramatic conflict.
In Legend, Alien View, Performance without Audience, Hero is Gone, the radiance left on the canvas is liken to the remained alkali and salts on Gobi desert, whose light points to the other bank that is made up of inquiries. In order to get close to him, a stranger needs a tacit understanding or several familiar words to cross the bank. The moment he knows, closeness is burning cozily.
Xiaofei literally means that one must take off only after daybreak. For the daybreak blends the gaze, inspiration and doubt of the daylight with the damage, fire and montage of the dark night.
Alone he stands by the bank and on the cliff, whose figure turns into a green leaf or lifting smoke in the eyes of a distant observer. ——by Ai Hai
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Florentijn Hofman ：Celebrate!
Li Nu: As if Sand Were Stone
Exhibition customization course | TIM YIP MIRROR children's art class
TAM Open Studio / Hello, New Friends
WANG SHIKUO/TODAY ART MUSEUM YOUNG ARTIST RESIDENCY IN NEW YORK CITY
2018 third wang shikuo award -- nomination exhibition of contemporary young artists
