Opening 9/4 | Li Hanwei: New Communication | chi K11 art museum

Li Hanwei:

New Communication

Artist: Li Hanwei

Opening: 2022.9.4  14:00-16:00

Dates: 2022.9.4-10.3

Venue: chi K11 art museum, 

B3, K11 Art Mall 300 Huaihai Road Central, Huangpu District, Shanghai

MadeIn Gallery is pleased to present artist Li Hanwei’s solo exhibition “New Communication” in collaboration with chi K11 art museum from September 4 to October 3, 2022. Occupying Hall 5 of the museum, the exhibition will feature five new installations by the artist. Li collects and purchases large amounts of source material from the Internet, which is then reassembled and presented in the exhibition hall through montage techniques, arriving at a playful narrative where virtuality and reality coexist.

Li Hanwei (b.1994) has won critical acclaim for his “Liquid Health” series (2019), “∞” (2020), and “Subculture Investment Bank – Shrine to Review the Universe ofImages” (2021).

A major interest throughout Li’s career is the invasion by science and technology of the human body, cultural vision, and living space, along with the ensuing reconstruction of the sensibilities of contemporary people, particularly users of the simplified-Chinese Internet. His complex and multi-layered installations weave together various narratives of work, life, and desire into a visual format. The informational and emotional flows on online platforms are fused skillfully by ways of collage, thus forming a media phenomenology of simplified-Chinese Internet with a distinctive personal touch.

Li manipulates the content, vocabulary, organizational aesthetics and ideology of Internet platform enterprises to examine their role in shaping the global capitalist culture. His work challenges the Neoliberal tendency and cosumerist ideology that pervade the Internet economy and are rooted in a globalized culture of modern technology, consumerism, organization, and information dissemination.

 About LI Hanwei 

Born in Xuzhou, Jiangsu province in 1994, Li Hanwei graduated from the Shanghai Institute of Visual Arts in 2018, and currently lives and works in Shanghai. Li’s practice is based on adapting forms of commercial advertisements and films as metaphors. Through the study of communication methods, the artist uses CG images to establish a worldview in the fictional world where counterfeit of the real world and science-fiction coexist, as a way to present the intersection of contemporary culturalforms and individual identities.

Li was nominated for “Dior Photography and Visual Arts Award for Young Talents” in 2020 and for “ART POWER 100 YOUTH POWER” in 2019.

Li held the solo exhibition “Liquid Health” at Goethe Open Space, Shanghai in 2019. He has also participated in group exhibitions including: “Spring Rhapsody”, KWM Art Center, Beijing, 2022; “Wave Wave”, chi K11 Art Museum, Shanghai, 2021; “Do Not Black Out”, McaM, Shanghai, 2021; “USB Multi-Port Linking Exhibition”, MadeIn Gallery, Gallery Func, QIAO SPACE, in the PARK, Shanghai, 2021; “Generation Now”, Kultursymposium Weimar 2021, Eigenheim Weimar, Weimar, Germany, 2021; “Futurism of the Past”, Beijing Contemporary Art Expo 2021 STORY, Beijing, 2021; “Looping”, CHAO Art Center, Beijing, 2021; “Undefined”, Kiyoshi Art Space, Tokyo, Japan, 2020; “Ensemble Urban”, APSMUSEUM, Shanghai, 2020; “Illusive Particles”, MadeIn Gallery, Shanghai, 2020; “Sino-Wharf: from Chinatown to Red Internationalism”, OCAT, Shenzhen, 2020; “Recommendations of Institutions”, Boxes Art Space, Shenzhen, 2020; “Wild Metropolis”, Powerlong Museum, Shanghai, 2019; “Advent: Inventing Landscape, Producing the Earth”, Qianshao Contemporary Art Center, Shanghai, 2019; “Extreme Mix”, Guangzhou Airport Biennale, Guangzhou, 2019; “The Variable and The Generating”, MadeIn Gallery, Shanghai, 2019; “Hunting Cycle”, MadeIn Park, Shanghai, 2018; “Shanghai Hot the Beheaded Six”, Yell Space, Shanghai, 2018;“BABEL7”, Babelsberger Strasse 52, Berlin, Germany, 2018; “Diversity”, École nationale supérieure d'art de Nice – Villa Arson, Nice, France, 2016.

Meanwhile, Li co-operates the online contemporary art space Slime Engine with Liu Shuzhen, Fang Yang and Shan Liang. Li has been involved in the conception and production of multiple exhibitions of Slime Engine.

 About chi K11 art museum 

Located in central Shanghai, chi K11 art museum opened in 2013 and covers a total area of 3,000 square metres. To date, the venue has held more than 30 art exhibitions of varying types, including Master of Impressionism – Claude Monet and Media – Dali, not to mention its more than 200 separate lecture series and great number of artist forums and art workshops for the general public. Having collaborated with leading art museums across the world (including Palais de Tokyo and Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London and Serpentine Gallery in London, and MoMA PS1 and the New Museum in New York), chi K11 art museum encourages cross-cultural dialogue between local and global art scenes and provides art lovers of all ages with access to contemporary art in the form of fulfilling aesthetic experiences.

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