黑料不打烊

Scream are proud to present internationally acclaimed Chinese artist Liu Bolin鈥檚 first UK solo exhibition The Heroic Apparition.  Liu Bolin was born in 1973 in China鈥檚 Shandong province and attended the prestigious Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in 2001 and received a Master of Fine Arts degree.  Initially conceived as a series of performances, Bolin selected varying locations around Beijing and posed motionless while his team of assistants would paint his figure to replicate the background and enable the figure of the artist to completely blend into the surroundings.  This was then documented as a series of photographs and so the 鈥榠nvisible man鈥� was born.  Bolin鈥檚 iconic series have included performances in Beijing, Paris and New York and have captured the imagination of a global audience.

Bolin鈥檚 oeuvre includes sculpture, performance and photography but it is these 鈥榗amouflague鈥� images that have become his signature style.  Although visually intriguing and playful the works convey an unequivocal political stance and are implicitly potent in content.  Having moved to Beijing in 1999 Bolin became a key figure in Beijing鈥檚 artistic community and was greatly affected by the encroaching industrialisation and urban planning of the city, at the expense of these 鈥榓rtist villages鈥�.  The artist comments 鈥淢y clairvoyance makes it impossible for me to be a happy artist, and the only way I have to express my feelings is to show them in my works and try to use them to wake up the world around me鈥�.  The image of Bolin鈥檚 figure gradually dissolving into the background is a poignant way of conveying the fears and frustrations of society in the hands of a strict and oppressive regime.  But this idea of camouflage or disappearance can also be interpreted as an act of survival or as Silvia Mattei states 鈥渉is performances thus speak of the individual鈥檚 capacity to adapt to environmental changes and reaffirm human resilience鈥�.  The works in this exhibition address the tension between the advancing economical, industrial, social and environmental issues that affect communities across the world and it is these concerns that unite us all and enable Bolin to communicate powerfully and effectively to a global audience.