Li Gang at Rolando Anselmi

Artist: Li Gang

Exhibition title: Matter Awaken

Venue: Rolando Anselmi, Rome, Italy

Date: June 23 – September 30, 2022

Photography: Sebastiano Luciano / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Rolando Anselmi, Berlin/Rome

Rolando Anselmi is pleased to announce Matter Awaken, Li Gang’s first solo exhibition at the gallery in Rome.

The protagonist of Li Gang’s works is materiality, which becomes a tool for research and exploration of new artistic forms and unusual ways of experiencing surfaces, in an expansion of the perceptual scope of the work in which form and content coexist in a balanced bond. In his works, materiality is conceived as a kind of inner spirit, similar to the absolute spirit proposed by G.W. Friedrich Hegel: therefore, it can be understood as the spiritual embodiment of artistic materials.

The exhibition opens with Wine, which, together with Stamp and Fountain, is part of the Inside of the painting – Texture Series: the occlusion between the structure of the canvas and the pigment fully emphasises the special texture of the paint support and subverts the viewing experience of painting, dilating its traditional perception.

In the canvases Bonfire, Phoenix and Fountain – from the series Initial of the painting— Draft series – Li Gang combines the mystery of the draft with the inviolability of the canvas, exalting the sketch as the first impulse of artistic practice and the place where inspiration is never dormant.

After a cricket had been singing under one of his sculpture, Li Gang decided to record its sound to find out that it just conformed to the binary pattern of Morse code: ekpameu is the first phrase of the entire translated code, displayed here through the use of red glass and steel wires.

Before heading lower floor stands Hunger: the artist has created a black soap that combines white soap and black pigment in equal measure. Once this black soap is used, it can both wash and dye. Thus, the artist provocatively reflects on which part will devour the other: self-construction or self-denial?

For the making of River, Li Gang collected dead branches lying along a river, eliminated superfluous bifurcations and discovered the original form of the knot, a metaphor for the multiple events of life and the unexpected shapes of destiny.

The exhibition ends with the video Purple, in which Li Gang stages a humorous social critique. After mixing various foods and seeds containing purple anthocyanins, the artist has produced a special bird food suitable for almost a hundred different species. In the video, the freely migrating, flying and ejecting birds are like a great theatre of the sky and organic matter, infiltrating the earth and smoothing out the cracks torn by man and his culture.

Li Gang (b. 1986, Dali City, China) lives and works in Beĳing, China. He had solo exhibitions at: Galerie Rolando Anselmi (Rome 2022, 2017; Berlin, 2019), Galerie Urs Meile (Beĳing, 2020; 2016; 2013; 2011; Lucerne, 2017; 2014; 2011), Galerie Forsblom (Helsinki, 2017). Recent group exhibitions include: Galerie Urs Meile (Beĳing, 2021; Lucerne, 2017), Galerie Rolando Anselmi (Rome, 2020); Contemporary Gallery Kunming (Kunming, 2018), Museum of Confluence (Lyon, 2017), YiShu8 Art Foundation (Beĳing, 2016), Louis Vuitton Foundation Musuem (Paris, 2016), Gasometer Kulturzentrum (Liechtenstein, 2016), The 6th Moscow Biennial (Moscow, 2015), K11 Art Foundation Pop-up Space (Hong Kong, 2015), K11 Art Museum (Shanghai, 2015), Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2014)