The Art of Liu Qi

Liu Qi spent his childhood in the countryside of northwestern Sichuan, where rural life nurtured the first shoots of his art. An earthy simplicity runs through his work, even though most of it takes urban life as its subject.

In 1995, Liu Qi graduated from the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute and travelled to Aba Teachers College to take up a teaching post. During his first winter on the plateau, he and colleagues who shared his affection for it founded the Highland Red Art Studio. Chengdu Art reported on the studio’s activities under the heading ‘An Artistic Wind from the Plateau: An Emerging Collective of Artists.’ At the studio’s first exhibition, his oil paintings Eating, Commemorative Group Portrait and Positioning used symbolic imagery to portray a group of ‘city dwellers.’ Cowardly and truculent, they were the products of a distorted form of competition. Through these symbols, the artist expressed his criticism of a so-called ‘urban civilisation’ devoid of humane concern. From the perspective of an ‘observer,’ he enabled the ‘participants’ to see the strangeness in themselves.

In his essay Farewell to the Mask: The Art of Liu Qi, Wu Yongqiang, an associate professor at Sichuan University’s College of Art, wrote: ‘Liu Qi’s paintings are like the man himself: forceful and direct. Concern for society, personal anguish, flashes of insight—these inner impulses, not yet given time to coalesce, surge forth in a discontinuous language. This is particularly apparent in his recent works. There, it is as though some mechanism has been set in motion: a sleeping lion leaps up, roaring wildly. The stark black and white suggest a mythic lion unfurling its white mane against the night…’

During his years in Aba, he repeatedly travelled deep into Tibetan and Qiang areas, seeking the value and meaning of existence in places far from the clamour of the world. His oil painting Highland Landscape, which won second prize at the art exhibition of the Third Sichuan Provincial Ethnic Minorities Arts Festival in 1997, is a representative work reflecting his experience of the plateau. Yet to conclude from this that Liu Qi is a ‘highland artist’ would be an oversimplification. In fact, he has never confined himself to established ways or considered himself the painter of any one region. He is ‘at the periphery, with the world in mind.’ To make learning and exchanging ideas with fellow artists easier and more effective, he established his own painting studio in Chengdu. Through frequent, tireless journeys between the plains and the plateau, he gained an intense experience arising from the sharp contrast between modern urban civilisation and tranquil wilderness, from the stark dichotomy between glittering nightlife and primeval nature. He is familiar with both ways of life, yet can often stand outside them, revealing in unexpected ways the value of life itself and the absurdity of its surface appearances. This experience explains why his art stands apart from prevailing trends and has acquired an increasingly distinctive character.

As a young traveller on the path of art, Liu Qi has attracted increasing attention in recent years. His oil paintings Self-Portrait and Mask · State were selected for the major art volume The Art of Contemporary Painting, published by China Federation of Literary and Art Circles Publishing House. His oil painting series Lighthouse · Shadow was included in the major art volumes Contemporary Chinese Art and Chinese Art Today, published by China Fine Arts Publishing House. His oil painting Mountains No. 3 has also been used as an example in the university art textbooks University Art and Introduction to Art.