Images sourced from http://niagaragalleries.com.au/artist/liu-zhuoquan , http://www.space-station-art.com/artist.aspx?artistID=131&page=4 & http://www.liuzhuoquan.com/
LIU ZHUOQUAN
Ghastly, garish and gory may sound like the synopsis to the next Saw movie, but rest assured; these severed limbs aren’t the product of some corrupted soul, rather the striking creation of one of China’s most prolific and provocative contemporary artists, Liu Zhuoquan. Born in 1964 in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, the now Beijing based artist employs traditional craftsmen in local villages to collaborate in his commentary creations within painted glass vessels to reflect the issues and ideas that form his world.
In Broken Finger (2010) we see painted pickled delicacies that hit viscerally and politically; an bleeding assortment of suspended fleshy fingers and grisly gangrened hands contained inside 28 eclectic collected glass bottles housed in a stark, modern white vitrine. Aching, haunting, repugnant, yet completely compelling, his artwork bares witness to the work related accidents that occur to laborers in factories across China. Liu first stumbled across these dire health and safety conditions when he ventured to create a documentary about the workers contributing to the booming Chinese wealth and prosperity manifested in the flourishing industrial landscapes across cities over the country. He discovered that the most common injury involved the loss of fingers, and observed how these laborers who worked so arduously were ultimately deemed so disposable, trapped struggling in a system that suffocated them of their rights.
It seems fitting then that the traditional snuff bottle and neihua technique is used to achieve both visual and conceptual potency. The Chinese folk art that Liu employs is known as neihua, originally produced as traditional artistic trinkets of painted precision to thrive in the souvenier shops and personal collections as beautiful and personalized ornaments. They became forbidden during the Cultural Revolution as they were considered too ostentatious under the Maoist regime, yet over the past decades have remerged into the Chinese market. The work of anonymous artisans crafting meticulous envisions in painting reversely on a bottle’s belly with the finest long haired brush shares a fated categorization and neglect with the workers left amidst the squalor of the Chinese industrialization, merely a cog in the wheel hurtling the nation onwards into the glorious glow of capitalism and consumerism. It is here where Liu calls us to consider the disparity in wealth and the unseen detriment from so much growth that they are testament to, affecting lives and wellbeing for a greater cause. He is not simply holding a mirror up to his contemporary society, but rather baring this anguish in full transparency of clarity, confrontation and containment.
This commentary is extended throughout Liu's greater collections from works such as the scathingly bold Bottles and Babies (2011) and the terrifying Two-Headed Snake (2011) exploring similar themes of politics, ethics, fear, biology, cultural repression, and social controversies, to past atrocities that occurred during the Cultural Revolution that affected the artist and his family during his childhood, around the time when his affinity and fascination for glass containers began. Growing up near a university chemistry department, Liu developed affection for specimen bottles as well as a fear of the forbidden laboratory site. As an artist today, he collects and salvages discarded bottles and glass containers with irregular shapes, and conjures artworks embedded with literal and metaphoric meaning. These vessels not only display and hold interior beings and depictions, but also embody ideas on social, cultural and ethical issues including the economic and material expansion of China, fear and punishment, monitoring, and consumerism and capitalism as overarching almost omnipotent ideals.
One of his most poignant and elegiac artworks Seven Sparrows (2011) sees Liu move to paint inside light globes, depicting six exquisitely detailed and vibrant sparrows dangling down dead within the bulb. Yet the last globe in this collection, number seven, doesn’t contain a lowly sparrow, but a hunched man, head bowed, hanging lifeless from his hands from a thin rope from the top. The work conveys the experiences of the artist’s father during the Cultural Revolution, in which their relocation to the countryside saw his father placed to work towards the Four Pests Campaign, the extermination of rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows during the Great Leap Forward. This campaign not only caused crop-eating insects to flourish the crops without their main predators, but also induced an ecological imbalance that exacerbated the ongoing famine in which an estimated 40 million people starved to death. Liu’s father, who failed at the seemingly futile task of chasing sparrows off the crops to meet their demise, would later embody the frailty and restraint of these creatures in his own corpse as the artist was reminded of those same dead sparrows he so degradingly pursued. Through the repeated hallowed hunching and sharp juxtaposition between the birds and the tortured victim, Liu captures the despotic rule of the time and the unpredictable and irrational means of control instilled during the period. Frighteningly, the artist further highlights how the pain of this time still reverberates in China’s contemporary society in the new rise in domination and demand on resources and control. Like Liu’s father out in the fields, so too must the worker of today swelter in the midst of a common people striving for an unrealizable dream of prosperity and wealth that though depends on millions, will only feed the capitalist spirit of China.
In all, Liu Zhuoquan’s power to create contemporary commentary both delicate in depiction and controversially charged and wry with meaning is strengthened by links to traditional materials and techniques and a fierce passion to reflect upon political and social issues that aren’t necessarily talked about but presented with such transparency and wit that is sure to makes you wonder - Who knew an empty bottle of rum could hold so much spirit?
In Broken Finger (2010) we see painted pickled delicacies that hit viscerally and politically; an bleeding assortment of suspended fleshy fingers and grisly gangrened hands contained inside 28 eclectic collected glass bottles housed in a stark, modern white vitrine. Aching, haunting, repugnant, yet completely compelling, his artwork bares witness to the work related accidents that occur to laborers in factories across China. Liu first stumbled across these dire health and safety conditions when he ventured to create a documentary about the workers contributing to the booming Chinese wealth and prosperity manifested in the flourishing industrial landscapes across cities over the country. He discovered that the most common injury involved the loss of fingers, and observed how these laborers who worked so arduously were ultimately deemed so disposable, trapped struggling in a system that suffocated them of their rights.
It seems fitting then that the traditional snuff bottle and neihua technique is used to achieve both visual and conceptual potency. The Chinese folk art that Liu employs is known as neihua, originally produced as traditional artistic trinkets of painted precision to thrive in the souvenier shops and personal collections as beautiful and personalized ornaments. They became forbidden during the Cultural Revolution as they were considered too ostentatious under the Maoist regime, yet over the past decades have remerged into the Chinese market. The work of anonymous artisans crafting meticulous envisions in painting reversely on a bottle’s belly with the finest long haired brush shares a fated categorization and neglect with the workers left amidst the squalor of the Chinese industrialization, merely a cog in the wheel hurtling the nation onwards into the glorious glow of capitalism and consumerism. It is here where Liu calls us to consider the disparity in wealth and the unseen detriment from so much growth that they are testament to, affecting lives and wellbeing for a greater cause. He is not simply holding a mirror up to his contemporary society, but rather baring this anguish in full transparency of clarity, confrontation and containment.
This commentary is extended throughout Liu's greater collections from works such as the scathingly bold Bottles and Babies (2011) and the terrifying Two-Headed Snake (2011) exploring similar themes of politics, ethics, fear, biology, cultural repression, and social controversies, to past atrocities that occurred during the Cultural Revolution that affected the artist and his family during his childhood, around the time when his affinity and fascination for glass containers began. Growing up near a university chemistry department, Liu developed affection for specimen bottles as well as a fear of the forbidden laboratory site. As an artist today, he collects and salvages discarded bottles and glass containers with irregular shapes, and conjures artworks embedded with literal and metaphoric meaning. These vessels not only display and hold interior beings and depictions, but also embody ideas on social, cultural and ethical issues including the economic and material expansion of China, fear and punishment, monitoring, and consumerism and capitalism as overarching almost omnipotent ideals.
One of his most poignant and elegiac artworks Seven Sparrows (2011) sees Liu move to paint inside light globes, depicting six exquisitely detailed and vibrant sparrows dangling down dead within the bulb. Yet the last globe in this collection, number seven, doesn’t contain a lowly sparrow, but a hunched man, head bowed, hanging lifeless from his hands from a thin rope from the top. The work conveys the experiences of the artist’s father during the Cultural Revolution, in which their relocation to the countryside saw his father placed to work towards the Four Pests Campaign, the extermination of rats, flies, mosquitoes and sparrows during the Great Leap Forward. This campaign not only caused crop-eating insects to flourish the crops without their main predators, but also induced an ecological imbalance that exacerbated the ongoing famine in which an estimated 40 million people starved to death. Liu’s father, who failed at the seemingly futile task of chasing sparrows off the crops to meet their demise, would later embody the frailty and restraint of these creatures in his own corpse as the artist was reminded of those same dead sparrows he so degradingly pursued. Through the repeated hallowed hunching and sharp juxtaposition between the birds and the tortured victim, Liu captures the despotic rule of the time and the unpredictable and irrational means of control instilled during the period. Frighteningly, the artist further highlights how the pain of this time still reverberates in China’s contemporary society in the new rise in domination and demand on resources and control. Like Liu’s father out in the fields, so too must the worker of today swelter in the midst of a common people striving for an unrealizable dream of prosperity and wealth that though depends on millions, will only feed the capitalist spirit of China.
In all, Liu Zhuoquan’s power to create contemporary commentary both delicate in depiction and controversially charged and wry with meaning is strengthened by links to traditional materials and techniques and a fierce passion to reflect upon political and social issues that aren’t necessarily talked about but presented with such transparency and wit that is sure to makes you wonder - Who knew an empty bottle of rum could hold so much spirit?