Li Shun’s works for this exhibition appear to have three directions, which in fact all directed towards photography with the notion of ‘transformation’. Interestingly, photography only works as a medium and a process instead of the result. But it is also a result, or at least one of the results. Li Shun’s works are typical products of methodology, and we can even extend this notion to his world view of the world.

Direction No. 1: White Paperseries. Li shoots pieces of white paper of different shapes and prints them onto themselves. Or, he downsizes the images and repeats this process every time during printing. In this way, a piece of apparently meaningless white paper is: first a piece of artistic works; second, an object of expression; and third, a carrier of the artistic works. This seemly simple idea is a complicated transformation from concept to works, from conceptual appropriation to actual representation, and from a single medium to a mixture embodiment. It also represents a train of thoughts of the artist and his different way of ‘observing’ the ‘objects’. This world can never be summarized by one ‘perspective’. ‘Compound eye’ and even ‘beehive eye’ start with modernism, which are also highlights in the evolution of contemporary art. Representative and abstract at the same time, the white papers are translated into two catagories of works: one has concrete images (White Paper Series 1) and the other with abstract appearances (White Paper Series 2). The set of works are so interesting in that it develops into two artistic extremes by using the same artistic approach.

Direction No. 2: Study the Nature of Things series. At night, Li Shun drove his car through the city and collects the light with his camera using long-time exposures. He then selected thousands of random lines and composes them into parts of Chinese characters. Then he referred to calligraphy dictionary and made Chinese characters or quasi-characters out of them. This is an arduous yet interesting process. The final result is ‘calligraphy of lights’, which is a piece of works done by nature instead of after nature. It is a combination of nature and artificial through manual work. One of the features of contemporary art is to make a simple thing complicated. In this process, what the artist adds is not meaningless irrigation, but nutrition, or rather complicated content. The artist extracted Chinese calligraphy out of its original context to construct the life-like sense of form which target at typical characteristic of contemporary art: humor. The idea of making art out of Chinese characters originates from conceptual art. There are many instances of using original characters or made-up new characters, but it is rare to see someone making characters with images. The idea of making characters with images is away from the tradition of character making. To solidified momentary light and shadow, yearns for eternality but at the same time questions itself.

Direction No. 3: Untitledseries. Li Shun first drew images of black-and-white portraits with charcoal pencils on the negatives, and transfer the images onto the photographic paper. Photography is invented to represent an ‘authenticity’, but Li Shun works against it. On the one hand, he questions the authenticity of ‘truthful representation’, on the other, he ‘restores’ the ‘authentic illution’ as much as he can. The questioning of existent principles is an obvious solution in contemporary art, as well as a direct expression of its contemporariness. The charm of contemporary art lies in its uncertainty, which interchange the places of the process and the result, and thus sets up an ongoing paradox without solution. The sketches work like film negatives, and the negative films produce positive images. The study of materials and forms takes the spectators into a familiar yet strange setting, and makes them unable to see. The interchanges of roles in role-play have always been something spectacular in life. Illusions and misinterpretations are also part of human life. Artists are the sorcerers for humans, and they trick human beings from the known into the unknown.

Li Shun is a thoughtful and interesting artist. He often presents ‘simple and accessible’ results with complicated thoughts. But, the result is not an end.

You are still young, please keep going forward.