In Praise of Blandness | Liu Guofu
Past exhibition
Overview
We are proud to present In Praise of Blandness, Liu Guofu’s solo exhibition in our London gallery this autumn. Presenting the artist’s brand-new works Flower, Pervasion and Cold Mountain, the exhibition demonstrates Liu Guofu’s new artistic developments by showing these works for the very first time.
Liu was born in Nanjing, China, in 1964. Melding motions of light with air where ‘light’ brings out its depth and ’air’ helps disperse the ‘light’ to every corner of the piece, the artwork’s symbolic blue-greyish colour is fundamental to Liu’s signature style. Up close, the brushstrokes are chaotic and fragmented, yet from a distance these brushstrokes gather to form a poetic tranquility. Liu’s abstract calligraphic-style, with deliberately illegible markings, overlap in tens of layers to create a fragile texture, reassembling dreams and illusions, smoke and water. He masterfully combines mystics of eastern aesthetics with influences of western modern art such as impressionism and abstract expressionism to create a sort of blandness that encapsulates, in the artist’s own words, ‘elegance, sophistication, aftertaste and eternity’.
Liu's oil paintings have been exhibited in many major cities. Highlights include a solo show in 2011 that toured the Jiangsu Provincial Art Museum (Nanjing), Today Art Museum (Beijing), and the Shanghai Art Museum; In the same year, he also participated in the Parallel Exhibition at the 54th Venice Biennale. He also had a solo exhibition at 3812 Gallery (Hong Kong and London) in 2016, 2018 and 2021, and group exhibitions at Masterpiece London in 2022, RECONNECT: The Summer Exhibition in 2020 and Dialogue 5:5: Chinese and German Artists’ Group Exhibition in Bonn, Germany in 2014. Liu's paintings are widely collected by private and institutional collectors, such as MGM Chairman’s Collection (Macau), Shanghai Art Museum and Jiangsu Provincial Art Museum.
Click here to view the Hong Kong exhibition in 2021.
Watch
In Conversation and Q & A: Dr Malcolm McNeill (SOAS), Dr Joshua Gong (Unicorn Publishing) & Calvin Hui (3812 Gallery) on 'In Praise of Blandness'
Works
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Liu Guofu 劉國夫, Flower No. 7《花 - 7》, 2020
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Liu Guofu 劉國夫, Flower No. 9《花 - 9》, 2020
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Liu Guofu 劉國夫, Flower No. 13《花 - 13》, 2021
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Liu Guofu 劉國夫, Flower No. 14《花 - 14》, 2021
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Liu Guofu 劉國夫, Flower No. 17《花 - 17》, 2022
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Liu Guofu 劉國夫, Open Space No. 68《敞 - 68》, 2021
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Liu Guofu 劉國夫, Pervasion No. 37《彌漫 - 37》, 2021
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Liu Guofu 劉國夫, Pervasion No. 42《彌漫 - 42》, 2021
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Liu Guofu 劉國夫, Pervasion No. 38《彌漫 - 38》, 2021
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Liu Guofu 劉國夫, Empty Cold 2022-1《空寒 2022-1》, 2022
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Liu Guofu 劉國夫, Cold Mountain No. 10《冷山 - 10》, 2021
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Liu Guofu 劉國夫, Cold Mountain No. 11 《冷山 - 11》, 2021
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Liu Guofu 劉國夫, Cold Mountain No. 15《冷山 - 15》, 2022
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Liu Guofu 劉國夫, Cold Mountain No. 17《冷山 - 17》, 2022
Video
Installation Views
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