“Like the Chinese condition, the act of painting inside a tight, curved space can be difficult and frustrating”.
Liu Zhuoquan is an internationally rising, Chinese contemporary artist who’s practice spans painting, photography, film, and sculpture. Born in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China in 1964, he is best known for his mesmerizing collections of painted bottles, laced with images of exquisite symbolism and realism.
Both Liu’s material and conceptual practice are layered cultural memory and voice. Working alongside traditional Chinese craftsmen, he has uniquely adapted the ancient Chinese craft of ‘neihua’ or ‘inside bottle painting’ that originated during the Ming dynasty of the 15th century. The ancient practice involves using bent, longhaired brushes to painstakingly render images and symbols into the interior of bottles. Once used for painting the insides of Chinese ‘snuff’ bottles (containing powdered tobacco), the tradition behind this technique reflects the iconoclasm of both modern and ancient Chinese history.
Liu’s predilection for glass bottles resonates from his early childhood. Living opposite an abandoned university chemistry department, Liu speaks of his early interest in specimen bottles and glass vessels. References to pharmacology are ubiquitous throughout his practice, as many of the bottles he uses implore medicine – pharmacy tonics, and medication alcohol. Liu Zhuoquan takes the production of these items to an astonishingly epic level, amassing them row upon row, side beside side, with their incredibly detailed and realistic representations of people, plants, insects, as well as medical, political and cultural imagery. “The bottle is a metaphor for cultural struggle in a tight, sometimes suffocating environment”.
Growing up in a politically fuelled China during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, Liu’s childhood was dramatically shattered in 1970, when he was six. As the Cultural Revolution swept through the country, his family members were identified as potential agitators and were forcibly relocated to the countryside. Liu Zhuoquan references and speaks on his experiences growing up as a young boy, through his artistic practice, particularly his 2012 installation ‘Where Are You?’.
‘Where Are You?’, showcased at the 18th Biennale of Sydney, is a museum scale installation comprised of 1500 recycled glass bottles varying in size and shape, all individually hand painted to suggest a segment of a snake’s body. Communally arranged, the allusive collection of bottles imitates a slithering coil of black and silver snakes, seething across the gallery floor.
The spectacle of withering snakes never failed to provoke a collective chill amongst a dimmed room of huddled spectators, and Liu’s concept isn’t too far fetched from it either. “What is seen and unknown assumes imagined fear” – the reptile has always of servile fear for Liu, deriving from his experiences with snakes during his childhood. A powerful and stirring expression of personal trauma, the painted interiors of the dismal bottles convey a disturbing, dark nullity – an almost irate beast of emotion, sealed tightly within, threatening to escape. The work exudes the anxieties Liu regarded towards snakes, and those of a generation growing up in the menacing culture of his childhood, enduring significant cultural shifts from the poverty and iconoclasm of the Cultural Revolution, the economic boom of China in the 80s and the heavy capitalism of the modern day.
Liu regards his practice as cathartic. Spending many years in Tibet, the beliefs and practices of Tibetan Buddhism have significantly impacted his world-view and his own art practice. “With the precision of a surgeon, he uses his work to incise and heal”. The Buddhist tendency to understand the world holistically, along with the Westernised, European impulse to categorise and contain, inspired his 2010, ‘World of Thousands’ series, within which, he attempted to describe the world through a library of highly symbolic images.
Shown at Art Stage Singapore in 2011, this installation consisted of numerous rows of uniform bottles delicately painted with botanical, medical and political imagery. The collection of over two thousand bottles sits on labatorial specimen shelves, depicting copious individual images including broken fingers, insects, internal organs and items of clothing, alongside other similar items. Amassing the entire space of the room, from floor to ceiling, Liu Zhuoquan’s bottles pose a complex worldview.
The acquisition of these bottles is customarily a thing of individual and unique selection; a memento of personal choice. Showcasing so many together however, they register as something of mass production – a poignant comment on the Chinese markets of labour. Bottles encompassed with images of extraordinary birds and flowers, are gruesomely interlaced with those depicting dissected organs and lost limbs. This visual juxtaposition represents the disparities between the citizens of prosperous, developed nations, and those living in the sweatshops of the world – the tactless basis of our global economy.
Living in a city of both destruction and development in Beijing, the impacts of a shifting landscape considerably prevails through his works. ‘World of Thousands’ along with ‘Where Are You?’ not only reflect his experiences growing up in a turbulent China, but they also comment on global cultural shifts, Tibetan Buddhist beliefs, and the psychosis of dwelling in a rapidly changing urban context.
Liu Zhuoquan is an internationally rising, Chinese contemporary artist who’s practice spans painting, photography, film, and sculpture. Born in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China in 1964, he is best known for his mesmerizing collections of painted bottles, laced with images of exquisite symbolism and realism.
Both Liu’s material and conceptual practice are layered cultural memory and voice. Working alongside traditional Chinese craftsmen, he has uniquely adapted the ancient Chinese craft of ‘neihua’ or ‘inside bottle painting’ that originated during the Ming dynasty of the 15th century. The ancient practice involves using bent, longhaired brushes to painstakingly render images and symbols into the interior of bottles. Once used for painting the insides of Chinese ‘snuff’ bottles (containing powdered tobacco), the tradition behind this technique reflects the iconoclasm of both modern and ancient Chinese history.
Liu’s predilection for glass bottles resonates from his early childhood. Living opposite an abandoned university chemistry department, Liu speaks of his early interest in specimen bottles and glass vessels. References to pharmacology are ubiquitous throughout his practice, as many of the bottles he uses implore medicine – pharmacy tonics, and medication alcohol. Liu Zhuoquan takes the production of these items to an astonishingly epic level, amassing them row upon row, side beside side, with their incredibly detailed and realistic representations of people, plants, insects, as well as medical, political and cultural imagery. “The bottle is a metaphor for cultural struggle in a tight, sometimes suffocating environment”.
Growing up in a politically fuelled China during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, Liu’s childhood was dramatically shattered in 1970, when he was six. As the Cultural Revolution swept through the country, his family members were identified as potential agitators and were forcibly relocated to the countryside. Liu Zhuoquan references and speaks on his experiences growing up as a young boy, through his artistic practice, particularly his 2012 installation ‘Where Are You?’.
‘Where Are You?’, showcased at the 18th Biennale of Sydney, is a museum scale installation comprised of 1500 recycled glass bottles varying in size and shape, all individually hand painted to suggest a segment of a snake’s body. Communally arranged, the allusive collection of bottles imitates a slithering coil of black and silver snakes, seething across the gallery floor.
The spectacle of withering snakes never failed to provoke a collective chill amongst a dimmed room of huddled spectators, and Liu’s concept isn’t too far fetched from it either. “What is seen and unknown assumes imagined fear” – the reptile has always of servile fear for Liu, deriving from his experiences with snakes during his childhood. A powerful and stirring expression of personal trauma, the painted interiors of the dismal bottles convey a disturbing, dark nullity – an almost irate beast of emotion, sealed tightly within, threatening to escape. The work exudes the anxieties Liu regarded towards snakes, and those of a generation growing up in the menacing culture of his childhood, enduring significant cultural shifts from the poverty and iconoclasm of the Cultural Revolution, the economic boom of China in the 80s and the heavy capitalism of the modern day.
Liu regards his practice as cathartic. Spending many years in Tibet, the beliefs and practices of Tibetan Buddhism have significantly impacted his world-view and his own art practice. “With the precision of a surgeon, he uses his work to incise and heal”. The Buddhist tendency to understand the world holistically, along with the Westernised, European impulse to categorise and contain, inspired his 2010, ‘World of Thousands’ series, within which, he attempted to describe the world through a library of highly symbolic images.
Shown at Art Stage Singapore in 2011, this installation consisted of numerous rows of uniform bottles delicately painted with botanical, medical and political imagery. The collection of over two thousand bottles sits on labatorial specimen shelves, depicting copious individual images including broken fingers, insects, internal organs and items of clothing, alongside other similar items. Amassing the entire space of the room, from floor to ceiling, Liu Zhuoquan’s bottles pose a complex worldview.
The acquisition of these bottles is customarily a thing of individual and unique selection; a memento of personal choice. Showcasing so many together however, they register as something of mass production – a poignant comment on the Chinese markets of labour. Bottles encompassed with images of extraordinary birds and flowers, are gruesomely interlaced with those depicting dissected organs and lost limbs. This visual juxtaposition represents the disparities between the citizens of prosperous, developed nations, and those living in the sweatshops of the world – the tactless basis of our global economy.
Living in a city of both destruction and development in Beijing, the impacts of a shifting landscape considerably prevails through his works. ‘World of Thousands’ along with ‘Where Are You?’ not only reflect his experiences growing up in a turbulent China, but they also comment on global cultural shifts, Tibetan Buddhist beliefs, and the psychosis of dwelling in a rapidly changing urban context.