LiShun
Li Shun’s latest artistic creation eloquently presents his smart ideas, remarkable strength and outstanding skills. We should make it clear that enjoying the original works and the pictures are completely different, especially regarding such immense dimensions.
Li Shun focuses on the “sea” as the theme of artistic creation because it is so unexpected and mysterious. You can hardly see the “real” sea just as you can hardly see the “real” history. So this exhibition is actually an exhibition about “history”, about its existence and non-existence.
According to Li Shun, people can learn about history from various ways. The general public would read mythology, poems and fictions (films). Since history is different in the view of different storytellers, he would rather choose some well-know wise men. And he chose Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Leaves of Grass, Gone with the Wind and 1984.
The other way of learning about history is to read the so-called “official history books”, so Li Shun chose The General History of China. “I searched on line for the images of the sea which are shot at different time in different places, and some of them are even created by 3D software with virtual models. I chose 864 pieces from the images, tried to put them together into one and sketched them on the pages of the latest-version of China’s textbook of History (From the first Chapter ‘The Long Pre-historic Era’ to the last one ‘Uphold and Implement A Scientific Outlook on Development and Strive for Comprehensively Building a Moderately Prosperous Society’, A National-level Textbook designed for China’s General Institutions of Higher Education during the 11th five-year plan). This immense artistic piece with a dimension of near 30 square meters is definitely the highlight of the exhibition.
