Lot 1023: LI HUI

LI HUI
(b. 1977)
Acupuncture
Signed in Chinese; signed 'Li Hui' in Pinyin; numbered '3/8' (on the bottom)
LED lamp, acrylic, stainless steel sculpture
165 x 60 x 40 cm. (65 x 23 1/4 x 15 3/4 in.)
edition 3/8
Executed in 2004

Tokyo, Japan, Shiseido Gallery, 2004.
Shanghai, China, Museum of Contemporary Art, Fiction@Love, 2006.

Fiction@Love, exh. cat., Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, China, 2006 (illustrated, p. 28).

What distinguishes Li Hui from the rest of his fellow artists is his attempt to express the abstract forms of light by the objective images of objects, which means using light as a tool for outlining shapes, thus allowing light, with indefinite forms, to surpass, and dominate the inner spiritual strength of tangible objects. Viewers are invited into a bewildering world, both realistic and surreal, which touches them in a more overwhelming way than the visual form of the work could offer. Li's breakthrough in artistic creation moves beyond the original form of sculpture, thereby rejuvenating his works with a sense of emotional mastery and vibrancy of life, which directly penetrate our emotional nerves.

The unique artistic language of Li, can be read alongside with the Chinese stratagem, such as 'making something out of nothing', 'turning emptiness into reality', answering to the difference in abstract conception between the East and the West. Concepts like 'Yin-Yang', 'Qi', 'Hun-Dun', 'Yi-Jing', that can be conveniently but by no means adequately, translated as, 'femininity and masculinity', 'energy', 'abyss', 'state of conception'. And these barely translatable concepts are the focal points of the originality in Li's art.