Liu Bolin the invisible artist, known throughout the world for its extraordinary mimetic creations which, behind the apparent simplicity of camouflage, pursue a process of knowledge that passes through the superimposition of one's own identity with that of the "things" around us, takes shape in Rome in an important exhibition to the Vittoriano complex. The Chinese artist who, thanks to a very personal language that integrates performance, painting, installation and photography places himself at the center of his works, however making his body lose its own consistency to take on that of the world around it, mingling with it, whether it's a photo of a glacier, or a monument or an architectural complex, is told in Rome in this important exhibition which starts from the first performance in Beijing to get to the most recent shots of 2017 at the Royal Palace of Caserta and the Colosseum, specially created for the Roman exhibition and now exhibited in a world preview.
An artistic adventure that of Liu Bolin who forged ahead, and which over a decade led him to the ribalta world starting from a village of Chinese artists in Beijing. It's 2005: the Beijing administration orders the demolition of the Suojia Village district, where many artists critical of the government reside. Liu Bolin, born in 1973 and making his debut as an artist, blends in with the rubble of his studio, blends in above all to give voice to the invisible, i.e. the artists with whom he grew up and trained in the neighborhood, lets himself be photographed blending in with the rubble of the village and discloses the photo starting a silent and "transparent" protest, at the same time enjoying an unexpected success. Thus began the extraordinary career of one of the most talented and interesting artists on the contemporary world scene, capable of hiding strong social messages through apparently simple images, in a synthesis of multiple languages such as painting, installation and photography.
His performances want to be a loud and clear message of what is happening in the presentbetween the weight of history and the consequences of progress. Over time, Liu Bolin has himself photographed in front of the most important monuments in the world, bookshops, supermarket shelves, works of art, mountains of rubbish and among immigrants; his fame grows until his images become an icon for the big brands: one for all Moncler, which uses a Liu Bolin camouflage for several seasons to advertise its brand, but also Tod's, Ferrari and many others. Seven thematic cycles retrace the artist's poetics: from the first works of the Hiding in the City series of 2005 up to the present day, in an ideal journey between China - with its famous buildings, its myths, social problems - and the Italy.
In fact, the exhibition unfolds from the origins to the Grand Tour of Liu Bolin over the last ten years (from 2008 to today), enclosed in the title Hiding in Italy, during which the artist immerses himself in the symbolic places of Italy, from Milan to Verona, passing through Venice up to Rome and the Royal Palace of Caserta. A journey that continues in the world with the Hiding in the rest of the world section, in which the artist has his portraits taken in London, Paris, New York, New Delhi, Bangalore.
In the stages of this itinerary, still ongoing, Liu Bolin manages to face in a neutral, albeit aware way, topical social issues, such as the frenzy of consumerism, which emerges in Shelves, or the knot of immigration in Migrants, without neglecting the glam of the Fade in Italy, up to the Cooperations, i.e. images created for advertising campaigns of major Italian and French fashion brands, demonstrating how art is always closely intertwined with reality in all its complexity and contradiction. Like many of the most important contemporary artists, Liu Bolin also accepts to be part of a field of creativity as popular as sophisticated as that of fashion.
It lends its language and its representative modality to some of the most important brands in the world. From Valentino to Lanvin, from Jean Paul Gaultier to Angela Missoni, to become the protagonist of one of the most famous communication campaigns in the world for Moncler. On the one hand this is undoubtedly the acknowledgment of a popularity achieved by Liu Bolin, who has gone beyond the narrow confines of contemporary art, but on the other and more properly for the artist it is the desire not to back down in the face of manifestations of our contemporaneity. The demonstration that a work of art is an integral part of its time and of the world as it manifests itself in all its contradictory completeness.
“Performance, painting, installation and of course photography – writes the curator of the exhibition, Raffaele Gavarro presenting the artist in the catalog – form a linguistic and expressive unicum which determines the entire construction process of the work attested by the final image and in front of which we are instinctively led to retrace its salient passages: Liu Bolin who chooses the exact point of the thing to merge with; Liu Bolin who prepares the colors in shades that correspond perfectly to the thing; Liu Bolin who undergoes the painting of his body; Liu Bolin motionless and invisible in front of the lens, immersed in the thing more than just in front of it. The process has implicit, a form of knowledge of the thing with which the artist identifies himself, which if in the final landing is of a visual type, he contemplates its essence and which, referring to Giordano Bruno, corresponds to us, being the whole made of one material. The knowledge of the thing in which Liu Bolin immerses himself, making himself invisible in it, is therefore and in the end a knowledge of himself”.
