Li Qunli observes the world imperturbably with his camera lens, and filters the trivial details of life with unadorned brushstrokes.
Li Qunli observes the world imperturbably with his camera lens, and filters the trivial details of life with unadorned brushstrokes.
Taking photography as the primary way to interact with the world, Li Qunli believes in the power of the direct and honest expression of photography, and its ability to “showcase the inherent power of the existence of things". "If one thing matters, everything matters" can well summarize Li's philosophy of creating - industrial landscapes that are empty and silent, solemn images of ordinary things, and blurred bodies with their faces hidden, all appear under his lens. He emphasizes the "discovery" of everyday things. For Li, this distinctive perspective itself is the most crucial creation of art. He brought into view the scattered corners of the city behind its gleaming skyline, intuitively capturing scenes that were too common to be unfamiliar.
Li Qunli often uses his photographs as blueprints for his paintings. Most of the visual layout of his paintings came from the composition of his photos. It is true that in the process of drawing the paintings based on the photography, the artist makes subtle alternations to the content, but for Li, this kind of painting is almost like another way of outputting his photography, as if it were scanned and printed. He omits the characteristics of brushwork, color, texture and other features that are often tainted with the artist's subjective style to the greatest extent possible, and instead uses the act of "drawing" itself as an answer to the question of whether he can recreate the photographic landscape with his brush. Li intends to use painting as, and only as, a transparent channel for the viewer to communicate directly with the subject in the picture - he lays out the depicted object directly before the viewer.
In this sense, Li Qunli's paintings are another kind of documentary of reality, or in other words, an expression of his photography. In this exhibition, by using painting as another aspect of photographic expression, we hope to explore the subtle relationship between Li's photography and paintings, and to restore the purely static and unadorned appearance of the everyday scenes that the artist wants to reach through his creations. As the artist himself said, "no position, no analysis, no judgment, a self-sufficient tranquility" is Li's desired attitude towards his own works.
