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Liu Jianhua (b. 1962) lives and works in Shanghai. At the age of fourteen he began to work alongside his uncle and mentor, the ceramicist Liu Yuan Chang at the former imperial kilns in Jingdezhen. Liu went on to study sculpture in the department of Fine Arts at the Jingdezhen Pottery and Porcelain College from 1985 to 1989. He later lectured at the Yunnan Institute of the Arts, and now works as a Professor in the Sculpture Department of the School of Fine Arts at Shanghai University.
‘Between’, a showcase exhibition of recent sculptural works by Liu, was staged at Pace’s London gallery. It coincided with a major exhibition of the work of Ai Weiwei at the Royal Academy, in its premises adjacent to Burlington House, as well as events surrounding a state visit to the United Kingdom by Chinese premier Xi Jinping. Many of the works included in the Pace exhibition had not been seen in the UK before.
Unlike artists associated with the movement known as ‘New Ink’, who have, in recent years, sought to reinvent ink and brush painting rooted in China’s Confucian literati traditions, in making his sculptural works Liu uses techniques learned during his apprenticeship as a ceramicist in Jingdezhen. His sculptures, while presented as artworks, are distinctly artisanal in their manufacture, materials and finish; and, as such, may be interpreted—according to the artist’s intentions—as a divergence from high-cultural Chinese literati artistic thinking and practice.
In spite of this demurral from historical Chinese cultural attitudes and ways of working, Liu’s works nevertheless invite sustained contemplation of a sort commensurate with China’s Daoist and Buddhist traditions, both of which advocate a meditative attitude towards nature and