DIARY - LI MING'S SOLO EXHIBITION (solo)

OVERVIEW

EXHIBITION SYNOPSIS

Li Ming, born in 1986, a young artist studying at the New Media Department of the China Art Academy, mainly realize videos. His works are directly influenced by the environment he's living in, his daily life. He focuses on mundane details, modify them, gives us another perspective to their shapes, nature. In Willow Twig (柳条), a willow, by the West lake in Hangzhou, has been uprooted, strollers plays with its twigs, wearing them on the head as a crown. The artist and his friends tell people that twigs carry a lot of insects and that they shouldn't put them on their head. Shot like a documentary, this video shows people's various reactions, their credulity: most of them are disgusted, but none doubts the truthfulness of what they are being told. Through a simple device, the artist 'remove' the color of pomegranates (The Color of Pomegranate 石榴的颜色), perhaps alluding to people's preconveived ideas about how things should be, or look like. On one year's July 7th Li Ming fixed short candles on the top of dried stems in a plantation. At night, this piece of land become a field of candles, sounds of crikets reminds us the this scene's backrgound. In an exhibition organized in cooperation between the ShanghArt gallery and the China Art Academy, Li Ming presented a new video, filming dust and dead skin flying as he scratched different parts of his body. He participated to "Our Unreliable World, Hangzhou Young Artist Video Exhibition" (2007), "Future is in Future, Group Exhibition of Young Artist" (2007) ShanghArt Gallery and "Shall See" in Hangzhou (2007).

In his first solo exhibition, "Diary", Li Ming reveals stories, feelings, observations of his daily life: individual acts, between thoughts and entertainments. "My works are just like diary's sudden smears, prompts notes, illegible, incomplete, without clue. They are all real individual experiences, coming from my daily life, films watched on dvd player, re-edited with an infatuation for details, imagination, extempore creation's impulsion or simple provocation towards solemnity and decency. Just as you cannot fully understand a person by reading his diary, there are no direct relationship between the text and my works. It will only evoke some imagined 'misunderstandings'. Diaries are very personal: someone focuses on its own individuality and become narcissistic, worrying or expecting that someone will read these stifing, endosed feelings disguised into paper." (Li Ming)