Writing & Publications
Interviews, criticism and the artist’s own writing, alongside publications, historical documents and internet memory.
Criticism & Research
Critical writing, curatorial essays and research by others on Liu Qiming’s work, practice and related questions.
After Cleansing: The Body, Social Relations and Visual Resonance in Three Works by Liu Qiming
Grace Yang reads Cleansing, Washing Hands and Teeth Cleaning together, tracing the residue of cleansing, the burdens borne by the body and the conditions of care, alongside the visual resonance of the “red circle.”
Beyond Borders · The Art of Empathy
Grace Yang’s curatorial essay for Pandemic · Empathy considers freedom of thought, artistic empathy and the human condition during the pandemic.
From Social Reciprocity to Play: A Sociological Reading of Liu Qiming’s Red Envelope
Liao Liao reads the one-fen electronic red envelope through the changing relationships between social reciprocity, exchange, equality, and play.
The Meaning of Images in Liu Qiming’s Social Media Circle
Liao Liao examines fragmentation, shared identities, visual consumption, and the distance between an image and the event it represents.
Floating Clouds: A Work of the Inner Life Beyond Vision
Liu Xiaoqian considers the pared-down compositions, social experience and thought in Floating Clouds, and the difficulty of bringing vision and imagery into resonance.
Examining History and Facing Reality
Li Pin responds to Liu Qiming’s Sensitive Words for a Day, discussing historical memory, social responsibility and the writer’s own views on contemporary society.
A Reverie on an Oil Painting: Floating in the Air
Jing Yu reflects on the figure, gray space and troubled sense of fate in Liu Qiming’s Swimmer No. 01, in an essay written in Hangzhou in 2009.
Preserving Personal Historical Memory — On Liu Qiming’s Oil Paintings
Wang Lin considers Liu’s painting as a personal, poetic response to historical forgetting, and a challenge to collective discourse.
Life Hanging by a Thread — Liu Qiming and His Paintings
Gao Ling follows the thread connecting Liu’s personal experience, symbolic political landscapes, and the precarious figures suspended within them.
Between Passion and Reflection — On Liu Qiming’s Oil Paintings
Wu Yongqiang reads Liu’s changing visual languages as a continuous inquiry into dignity, memory, passion, and the individual’s historical condition.
The Art of Liu Qi
He Duojun considers Liu Qi’s rural childhood, his journeys between the plateau and the city, and the recognition of his paintings, examining their social critique, viewpoint and developing individuality.
Farewell to the Mask: The Art of Liu Qi
Wu Yongqiang, writing as Gong Shui, considers passion, ideas and social masks through Liu Qi’s black-and-white paintings and works shown in his 1995 solo exhibition, reading his artistic practice as a succession of farewells and acts of self-transcendence.
Against the Norm
Curator and critic Fang Zhenning examines the fine red lines in Liu Qiming’s oil paintings as a visual language shaped by painting and lived experience, exploring bodily suspension, conflict with order, and lives poised between faith and the abyss.
Asking Heaven (A Faint Light)
A poem dedicated to the painter, moving between darkness, an almost vanishing light and the thoughts prompted by his work.
One Yuan for One Hundred People?
Peter Agni examines Red Envelope through the social, commercial and reciprocal meanings of the gift, focusing on the expectations and inner responses elicited when one yuan is divided among one hundred participants.
Liu Qiming: Recording History in Painting
Wang Yaqing reflects on encountering Liu Qiming’s paintings through Wu Yongqiang’s writing, and on the recovery of historical truth and personal memory through color and form.
The Highest Directive: Drinking Water of One’s Own Accord, Urinating Involuntarily
An archived visitor’s account of an afternoon at 798, including a personal response to Liu Qiming’s A Single Thread paintings and their tension between lightness and weight.