Liu Wei

With Throw a Dice, a site-specific, permanent work  created for the entrance of Palazzo Diedo, Liu Wei  continues his exploration of sculpture, architectural  settings, and the human figure. Welcoming visitors  into an immersive environment filled with fantastical  animals, this new installation, at once dreamlike and  functional, expands on the artist’s ongoing philosophical  investigation of what it means to be human. Taking  inspiration from the architectural context, the work  collapses the distance between past and present. 

Liu Wei moves effortlessly between various mediums,  without a unifying stylistic trend. Conceptualism, satire, and  humor are the distinctive features of his works. 

Wei, in Speculation No.2, employs a visual and cognitive  hybrid language with materials and forms evocative of  antiquity: the sculpture consists of a metal sphere and a  hollow structure reminiscent of natural cave formations.  The sketched body of a lion emerges from the cave, almost  merging with the structure itself, while its form is enveloped  by a snake that extends beyond the main structure into the  viewer’s space. 

In Adventure 3, Wei explores humanity and the relationship  between body and matter through theological allegories  of creation, salvation and fall, reflecting the transformation  of human and social life influenced by screens, data and  technologies. Adventure 3 is presented for the first time at  Diedo Palace.

Courtesy of the Artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Seoul and London