Liu Jianhua

Liu Jianhua was born in 1962 in Ji’an, China. He graduated from the Jingdezhen Ceramics Institute in 1989. He currently lives and works in Shanghai.

Since the 1980s, Liu has experimented within a contemporary context. His porcelain and mixed-media works reflect recent economic and social changes and their impact on China. His Regular Fragile series, first shown at the Venice Biennale Chinese Pavilion in 2003, was composed of porcelain replicas of ordinary objects that privileged appearance and symbolism over function. In 2008, he shifted his attention away from a close and direct focus on the problems of globalization and intense social change in China. He proposed the idea of “no meaning, no content,” and beginning that year with Untitled, he explored new directions and developed his own expressive system for contemporary art.

Liu Jianhua’s works have been exhibited at the Kunstmuseum Bern, the Shanghai Art Museum, the Asian Art Museum, the National Art Museum of China, the Groninger Museum, Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, the Hamburg Art Center, the Mori Art Museum, Tate Liverpool, and the Center Pompidou. He has also participated in the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial, the International Sculpture Biennale of Carrara, the Biennale of Sydney, the Nanjing Triennial, the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, the Singapore Biennale, the Shanghai Biennale, and the Venice Biennale.

Liu Jianhua’s works have been collected by MoMA New York, the USC Pacific Art Museum, the K11 Art Foundation, the KODE Art Museums of Bergen, the Yuz Foundation, OCAT Shanghai, the Towada Art Center, the Guggenheim Museum, the Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Shanghai World Expo National Organizing Committee, the Shanghai World Financial Center, Santander Bank Art Center, Today Art Museum, Shenzhen Art Museum, the Guangdong Museum of Art, the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture, the Queensland Art Gallery, the Kawara Museum, the China Club, Coca-Cola Corporation, He Xiangning Art Museum, and the Museum of Arts and Crafts in Frankfurt.

http://www.liujianhua.net/