XX - LI MING'S VIDEO EXHIBITION

in Platform China (Beijing)
2009.11.14 - 2009.12.27

text source: Platform China

Li Ming was born in Hunan province in 1986. After graduated from the China Academy of Fine Arts in the New Media Department in 2008, he has focused his works to videos and installations. There are 11 videos and video installations will be showed in this exhibition in a designed self-experienced scene. We hope that through those works from the artist to explore and discuss a newly raised issue among the younger generation of Chinese artists -- how do we define the value of private self-expression in the context of contemporary art.

Li Ming expresses his main topic from three aspects in his works. The first is related to his confused and disordered emotions and feelings. The work “Not Self-inhibiting Mood”, for example, is related to the artist’s memory of an obsessive disorder he suffered when a child. . However, the video is not reduced to the simple subject of memory; in the last editing in fact he transfers the points of interest to a linear timeline of contradictions and to the conceptualization of logic. Through the re-arrangement of incoherent material, mixing reality with fantasy, the artist presents real facts as it was in a dream. The same method is also applied in "Dogs’ Language", "Beat Me" and some other works.

Another aspect in his works is related to theatrical expressions performed in certain moments of real life. For example, in “Visiting Ancestral Graves (Shangfen)”the noise of weapons such as cannons connected implicitly with the behaviors during the visiting of the artist’s family to their ancestral grave. It’s not only a play that pieced up from the real scene and the historical memory of an individual system that caused by the real scene. But the usage of old movies’ mode attests the aesthetics form of grand narratives. Another work “Flooded Path” is a documentation of a performance. However, the artist’s appearance on the scene as well as the dramatic end turn a common action into a painstakingly performance. “ Back Garden ” shows a playing process of a group of retarded security men. Even if it doesn’t have any particular significance in itself, the all piece has turned reality into an absurd situation.

The third aspect of Li Ming’s works evolves around the artist’s opinion towards the atmosphere created in between bodies and bodies: it mostly reflects the ambiguous that caused among bodies from the same gender. How could you make people feel comfortable and natural when their bodies are together? In the work “XX”, we can see two men who trust each other's bodies are exchanging their vests but keeping their skin together all the time. It makes the video fills with ambiguous and weird. The artist not only pays attention to the pure development of the play, but also, tries to find out ways of using what way to change the normal friendship of two men into a not natural relationship. In both works “Nightfall Happiness” and “Elsewhere”, the artist expresses his fascination with physical contact. “Nightfall Happiness” shows a group of young half-naked men, whose backs are covered in cream, chasing each other, licking each other’s cream on the back, and some other possible ways of physical contact. The actions are vital, joyful and natural. Without focusing on the aesthetics and on the detachment from reality, it becomes a common way of having fun. The artist is more concerned about the fact that behi nd the ordinary and the usual, there is always something anomalous.

According to Li Ming, video shouldn’t directly represent reality. The things that we observe in reality are not actually real in the true sense; people have different perspectives in front of the same thing. Videos are actually visual products created by people. The artist works thus at the assemblage of his videos enjoying the same sort of freedom of a God: forging the shape of the world he wantonly shapes his own shadow. His absurd and conflictive works may let many people fall into a logistic maze. However, because of these incredible and uninhibited works, one can feel the sorrows and doubts of a sensitive individual.

在别处 Elsewhere / 单视频录象 Single channel video / 12'09" / 2009


上坟 Visiting Ancestral Graves / 单视频录象 Single channel video / 6'03" /


上坟 Visiting Ancestral Graves / 单视频录象 Single channel video / 6'03" /






Hit Me




不可自抑的情绪 Not Self-inhibiting Mood / 单视频录象 Single channel / 22'15" / 2009


Midnight of Doctor Ou Yang (in the toilets of the gallery)