Square by Liu Jianhua

Liu Jianhua, Square, 2014, porcelain, steel, dimensions variable © Liu Jianhua

Liu Jianhua

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b. 1962, Ji’an, China

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Liu Jianhua is known for his contemporary sculptural and installation practice. Addressing themes of accumulation and impermanence, Liu creates works in ceramic and with found objects, artifacts, and detritus as means to respond to Chinese history and culture.

Whereas the prevalence of porcelain in his oeuvre relates to a centuries-long tradition of craft in China, Liu also uses the medium as a marker of contemporary development within the context of globalization.

Liu was raised in Jiangxi Province during the Cultural Revolution and began working in 1977 as an apprentice in the Jingdezhen Pottery and Porcelain Sculpture Factory, the oldest established center of ceramic production in China. Following his uncle, a kaolin clay artisan and head of the factory, Liu learned to create porcelain sculpture by producing replicas of traditional figures. During this period, he read Paul Gsell’s literary work, Auguste Rodin: L’Art (1911), which profoundly influenced his thinking about sculpture. He later enrolled in the Fine Arts Department of the Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute, where he studied sculpture from 1985 to 1989, with a focus on realism.

Like many Chinese artists of his generation, Liu was influenced by the 85 New Wave movement that, informed by socio-political shifts and exposure to European and American art, proposed a radical turn toward expressive and experimental innovations. Breaking from realism and from traditional ceramic techniques, Liu began exploring personal narratives in his sculpture. By the end of the 1980s he began to work with abstraction and organic forms, producing roughly hewn figures from blocks of wood.

After graduating from the Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute in 1989, Liu accepted a position as associate professor in the Sculpture department at the Yunnan Arts Institute in Kunming, Yunnan Province, which he retained until 2004. Throughout this time, he continued to experiment with form and materials. In 1990, he produced the Life series, comprised of simplified anthropomorphic and zoomorphic figures made of unpainted terracotta. These early investigations coincided with Liu’s first solo exhibition, held at the Yunnan Arts Institute in 1990 and followed by his inclusion in a group exhibition organized by the Yunnan Art Museum, Kunming, in 1991.

Colored Sculpture–Memory of Infatuation by Liu Jianhua

Liu Jianhua, Colored Sculpture–Memory of Infatuation, 1997-2001, mixed media, 60 cm × 42 cm × 41 cm (23-5/8" × 16-1/2" × 16-1/8") © Liu Jianhua

By the mid-90s, Liu’s investigations broadened from personal narratives to social themes, resulting in two colorful series, Secrecy and Disharmony (both 1993–97), with sculptures that juxtapose headless female bodies and lifeless Zhongshan suit jackets, typically worn by male government officials. Liu expanded on these motifs in two subsequent series, both of which feature headless, armless women in traditional qipao dresses and high-heeled shoes. In Memory of Infatuation (1997–99) they lounge on vibrantly hued modern sofas and in Merriment (1999–2000) they women are outstretched on plates patterned with traditional Chinese motifs. These series also signalled Liu’s return to porcelain, adding to the symbolism of his imagery with themes of tradition, desire, domesticity, and globalization.

Regular Fragile–Mark in the Space by Liu Jianhua

Liu Jianhua, Regular Fragile–Mark in the Space, 2002, porcelain, dimensions variable © Liu Jianhua

Liu’s ensuing work revealed a departure from the brilliant colors of his earlier ceramic series, as he opted to produce objects in a uniformly bluish-white porcelain. A metaphor for the fragility of dreams, aspirations, and human life, the accumulative installation Regular Fragile (2003) consists of objects that Liu sculpted in porcelain and found materials. Placed together into sealed glass jars, they are presented on towering, ladder-like shelves. First unveiled at the Chinese Pavilion during the Venice Biennale (2003), Regular Fragile was subsequently included in the exhibition Alors, la Chine? at Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (2003).

He continued to work with porcelain, examining the dynamics of urban development, progress, and destruction in installations such as Transformation of Memories (2003), for which he reproduced fragments of cut trees in porcelain, and was included in OPEN, the International Exhibition of Sculptures and Installations, Venice (2004). In 2004, Liu settled in Shanghai, becoming a professor in the Sculpture department of the Fine Arts School of Shanghai University. In 2005, Liu co-founded the Polit-Sheer-Form Office art group with artists Hong Hao, Xiao Yu, and Song Dong, and curator Leng Lin. Appropriating the aesthetic vocabulary of the socialist era, the group sought to foster a sense of collectivity through participatory installations.

Yiwu Survey by Liu Jianhua

Liu Jianhua, Yiwu Survey, 2006, mixed media, dimensions variable © Liu Jianhua

Liu has produced large-scale works, including Dream (2005–06), a porcelain and video installation exhibited at the Singapore Biennale (2006), and Export—Cargo Transit (2007), an installation at the Shanghai Gallery of Art composed with industrial waste. In 2008, Liu’s concerns underwent a thematic shift, marking a departure from social references toward conceptual, non-narrative explorations of form and space. His subsequent untitled works in porcelain, which took the forms of vessels and faces flattened into silhouettes, were presented in his first solo exhibition at Beijing Commune (2008) and revealed a new philosophical approach toward form and abstraction in his practice. Further distillations of form resulted in the Blank Paper series (2009–12), thin sheets of white porcelain hung on the wall, and Traces (2011), a series of wall-bound black porcelain ink drops, ultimately leading to Square (2014), an installation comprised of gold-glazed porcelain pools resting on top of steel sheets, which Liu exhibited at Pace Beijing in 2014. Square was subsequently presented in Liu’s solo exhibition at the Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt, New Zealand (2016), and at the 57th Venice Biennale (2017).

Blank Paper by Liu Jianhua

Liu Jianhua, Blank Paper, 2009-2014, porcelain, 120 cm × 90 cm × 0.6 cm (47-1/4" × 35-7/16" × 1/4") each © Liu Jianhua

Trace by Liu Jianhua

Liu Jianhua, Trace, 2011, porcelain, dimensions variable © Liu Jianhua

Liu has been the subject of multiple solo exhibitions at institutions including the Taiwan Art Foundation, Taipei (2002); The Red Mansion Foundation, London (2004); Beijing Commune (2008); Z-art Center, Shanghai (2010); UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2011); Art & Public Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland (2012); Asian Art Museum, San Francisco (2016); TANK Shanghai (2021); Fosun Art Center, Shanghai (2022), and Towada Art Center, Aomori, Japan (2023). His work has been featured in numerous international group exhibitions including the Triennial Guangzhou, China (2002, 2005); Venice Biennale (2003, 2013, 2017); Biennial of Contemporary Chinese Art Montpellier, France (2005); Busan Biennale, South Korea (2006); Moscow Biennale (2007); Vancouver Biennale, Canada (2009); Glasstress, Venice (2011, 2015); Kiev Biennale, Ukraine (2012); Asia Triennial Manchester, United Kingdom (2014); Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale, Japan (2015); the Dakar Biennale, Senegal (2017); Guangzhou Airport Biennale, China (2019); The 2nd Anren Biennale, Chengdu, China (2019); MoCA Animamix Biennial, Shanghai (2020); The 14th Gwangju Biennale, South Korea (2023); The 4th Xinjiang · China International Art Biennial,  Uyghur, China (2024); and Ennova Art Biennale vol. 01, China (2024).

Liu’s work is held in institutional collections worldwide, including the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China; Kawara Museum, Shiga, Japan; KODE Art Museums of Bergen, Norway; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; SFAC The Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture; Shenzhen Art Museum, China; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate, London; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and the Yuz Museum, Shanghai, among others. Among his public commissions, Liu produced Can You Tell Me? (2006), for the collection of Zhangjiang Hi-Tech Park, Shanghai; Global Magnet (2009), at the Shanghai World Financial Center; and Mark in the Space (2010), for the Towada Arts Center, Japan.

Among his numerous honors and awards, Liu is the recipient of the Yunnan Literary and Art Award (1995), as well as the Chinese Contemporary Art Document Award (2005), and the Grand Award of the Biennale of Contemporary Chinese Art, Montpellier, France (2005). In 2010, he was presented with the Shanghai Public Art Award, and was named the Martell Artist of the Year by the Martell Art Foundation. He was honored with the 71st Award of Art China–Artist of the Year for Sculptural Art in 2013, and received the 2014 Jurors’ Choice Award from the Asia Pacific Breweries Foundation Signature Art Prize, Singapore.

Liu Jianhua has been represented by Pace since 2012.

Bone by Liu Jianhua

Liu Jianhua, Bone, 2009, porcelain, 12 cm × 182 cm × 10 cm (4-3/4" × 71-11/16" × 3-15/16") © Liu Jianhua

Container Series by Liu Jianhua

Liu Jianhua, Container Series, 2010, porcelain, dimensions variable © Liu Jianhua

End of 2012 by Liu Jianhua

Liu Jianhua, End of 2012, 2011, porcelain, 247 cm × 514 cm × 3 cm (97-1/4" × 202-3/8" × 1-3/16") © Liu Jianhua

Untitled 2012 by Liu Jianhua

Liu Jianhua, Untitled 2012, 2012, porcelain, 60 cm × 60 cm × 60 cm each (23-5/8" × 23-5/8" × 23-5/8") © Liu Jianhua

Teeth by Liu Jianhua

Liu Jianhua, Teeth, 2014, porcelain, glass, steel, 139 cm × 32 cm × 32 cm (54-3/4" × 12-9/16" × 12-9/16") © Liu Jianhua

Lines Series by Liu Jianhua

Liu Jianhua, Lines Series, 2015-2019, porcelain, dimensions variable © Liu Jianhua

Black Flame by Liu Jianhua

Liu Jianhua, Black Flame, 2017, porcelain, dimensions variable © Liu Jianhua

A Unified Core by Liu Jianhua

Liu Jianhua, A Unified Core, 2018, porcelain, dimensions variable © Liu Jianhua

The Shape of Trace by Liu Jianhua

Liu Jianhua, The Shape of Trace, 2016-2022, porcelain 120 cm × 110 cm × 9 cm (47-1/4" × 43-5/6" × 3-9/16") © Liu Jianhua