LIANG JUHUI EXHIBITION AT CONTRASTS GALLERY IN BEIJING AUGUST 17 – DECEMBER 17, 2008
Liang Juhui passed away on 22nd May, 2006 at the age of 47 due to a sudden heart attack. We wish to honour him through making his work known through his first retrospective exhibition in Shanghai.
Liang Juhui was one of the forefathers of avant-garde art in China and one of the first Chinese artists to make an impact on the international art world. He was an extremely versatile artist working and switching between media with great ease, using sculpture, photography, video and performance.
Liang Juhui was born in April 1959 in Guangzhou. He studied painting at the Guangzhou Institute of Fine Art. He was a key member of the Southern Artist Salon in the mid 80s and one of the founders of the Big Tail Elephant Workgroup in the 90s. Liang Juhui was selected to represent China at the Venice Biennale in 2003. He worked in a variety of media creating complex installations and photo-based work that took as their subject the rapid development of China and its impact on everyday life.
The artist was not motivated by money or fame but by the urge to create, and shunned commercial success in favour of making complex installations. The group exhibited extensively in Guangzhou with exhibitions often organised at the very last minute and in unconventional locations such as car parks. Guangzhou was one of the first cities to embrace foreign commerce after the Cultural Revolution and this led early on to an international outlook, which has informed much of the contemporary art produced there.
The forthcoming exhibition will be hosted by Contrasts Gallery in a converted Plastics Factory in Ruijin Road and will consist of several major installation pieces. In “Paradise”: a room constructed out of bamboo, Liang Juhui has used mirrors, electric lights and other effects to create environments in which the audience participates. He aimed to “emphasise transparency, experiences of space and its expansion, in order to incite one’s association, insight and hallucination”. These effects alter the perceptions of the audience.
In China, the Big Tail Elephants exhibited mainly as a group and only exhibited as individuals abroad. In 1998, the group had a major exhibition in Bern, Switzerland, which brought them to international attention. Liang Juhui also took part in many other group exhibitions internationally at such distinguished venues as P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Venice Biennale; The Guangzhou Triennial; The Kwangju Biennale, Korea; Museo de Arte Contemporarneo de Monterrey, Mexico; and the Hayward Gallery, London.
