Li Yongbin, born in 1963 in Beijing, belongs to the first generation of artistic innovators of the post-Mao era. Self-taught, he gave up painting in the late 1990s to work exclusively with video. Using the barest of means and the simplest of techniques, he creates work of great, and often disturbing, power. Frequently using his own face, or simple shadows, duration and repetition introduce a strongly psychological dimension to his work.
Li Yongbin has always been fascinated by the representation of temporality and the ways and possibilities in which we perceive events unfolding. In the last decades he has made numerous unedited real-time recordings of non-dramatic events, or rather, nonevents. For example, in Face he recorded the reflection of his own face on a windowpane against a cityscape at the moment of sunsets and as the night falls, the reflection of his face gradually appeared while the cityscape slowly faded into darkness. Those works are usually very long in duration and arduous for their beholders.
Li Yongbin’s work has made the sense of time radically acute, at the same time it leads us into a state of meditating time, the lapse of time, the meanings of time and life. In his paintings Li Yongbin wanted to portray the fascination that he discovered with video, return to these themes, ambiguities and equivocal messages.
Looking at his canvases one after the other, one can see the flashes of inspiration from videos. The head emerges from the flames and raises questions on the limits of space. Other paintings perfectly conveys the idea of speed, to such a point that the face represented in close-up on the canvas seems ready to escape from it. The eyes, always very striking, from one painting to another, emerge from shadows. With the lack of colour, the light of the paintings appears even more dazzling.
His work has been included in many solo and group exhibitions in China, Germany, France, Australia, Belgium, Switzerland, and USA, among others.
Year | Name of the exhibition | Museum/Gallery | Solo/Group |
---|---|---|---|
2014 | Unlived by What is Seen | Pace Gallery, Beijing, China | group |
2014 | Hans van Dijk - 5000 Names | Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China | group |
2011 | Out of the Box - The Threshold of Video Art in China | Guangdong Times Museum | group |
2011 | Thirty Years of Chinese Contemporary Art – Moving Image in China (1988-2011) | Minsheng Art Museum, China | group |
2010 | Works from Multiplex: Directions in Art, 1970 to Now | MoMA Museum of Modern Art, USA | group |
2010 | Still Life | Centre for Fine Arts - Bozar, Brussels, Belgium | group |
2010 | Faces | Galerie Mitterrand | solo |
2009 | Beijing - Havana, New Contemporary Chinese art Revolution | Cuba Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, Havana,Cuba | group |
2008 | Border of Virtuality - Chinese and Korean Media Art Now Exhibition | Han Ji Yun Contemporary Space, Beijing, China | group |
2008 | Faces and Faces | Dolores de Sierra | group |
2007 | Multiplex: Directions in Art-1970 to Now | Museum of Modern Art | group |
2007 | Convection | Three Shadows Photography Art Centre | group |
2007 | Li Yongbin | JGM Gallery, Paris, France | solo |
2007 | Best of Discovery@ShContemporary 07 | Shanghai Exhibition Center, China | group |
2006 | Regeneration: Contemporary Chinese Art From China and the US | Williams College Museum of Art | group |
2005 | Majong-Chinesische Gegenwartskunst aus der Sammlung Sigg | Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland | group |
2005 | Conspire The First Exhibition of TS1 Contemporary Art Center | TS1 Gallery | group |
2005 | Regeneration - Contemporary Chinese Art from China and the U.S. | Arizona State University Art Museum | group |
2005 | Li Yongbin | Soka Art Center, Beijing, China | solo |
2005 | Face of Face | Soka Art Center, Beijing, China | solo |
2005 | Pictorial DNA made in China | Galerie Urs Meile, Lucerne | group |
2004 | Faces: paintings | Edward Mitterrand Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland | solo |
2004 | Faces: paintings and videos | JGM. Gallery, Paris, France | solo |
2004 | Li Yongbin Faces | Le Granit, Belfort, France | solo |
2004 | A first look, Reinstallation of the Collection | Film and Media Gallery, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, U.S.A | group |
2004 | Officina Asia | Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Bologna | group |
2004 | Le moine et le demon, contemporary Chinese art | Museum of Contemporary Art, Lyon, France | group |
2004 | Modern Means : Continuity and Change in Art, 1880 to the Present | Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan | group |
2004 | China Now | Museum of Modern Art, New York | group |
2004 | All Under heaven, Ancient and contemporary Chinese art | MuHKA (Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp), Antwerp, Belgium | group |
2004 | Regis Golay / Li Yongbin | Galerie Mitterrand | group |
2004 | Modern Means: Continuity and Change in Art from 1880 to the Present | Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan | group |
2004 | China's Photographic Painting | Art Seasions, Beijing, China | group |
2003 | Alors la Chine | Centre National d'Art et de Culture Georges Pompidou, Paris, France | group |
2003 | Artificial Respiration | Zhen Miao Contemporary Art Center, Beijing, China | group |
2003 | Left hand, Right hand | 798 Art Center, Beijing, China | group |
2003 | Second Hand Reality | Today Art Museum | group |
2002 | My Space | Pingyao International Festival of photography, China | group |
2002 | Sun I, Synthetic Reality | East Modern Art Centre, Beijing, China | group |
2002 | The First Guangzhou Trienale-Reinterpretation: A Decade of Experimental Chinese Art (1990-2000) | Guangdong Museum of Art | group |
2001 | Compound Eyes | Earl Lu Gallery, Lasalle-Sia College of the Arts, Singapoor | group |
2001 | Cross Pressures | Oulu Art Museum and Finnish Museum of Photography, Finland | group |
2001 | Clues of the Future | Red Tate Gallery, Beijing, China | group |
2001 | Living in Time | Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin, Germany | group |
2001 | It's me | DDM Warehouse, Shanghai, China | group |
2001 | Living in Time - Contemporary Artists from China | Hamburger Bahnhof | group |
2001 | Cross Pressures - Contemporary Photography from Beijing | Oulu City Art Museum | group |
2000 | L'oeuvre Vidéographique de Li Yongbin | Brussels Academy of Fine Arts, Belgium | solo |
1999 | Supermarket | Shanghai, China | group |
1999 | Autonomous Action | Artspace, Sydney, Australia | group |
1999 | Sign of Life | Biennale de Melbourne, Australia | group |
1998 | Photography and Video from China | Max Protech Gallery, New York, USA | group |
1998 | A New Form of Video Art in China | 4A Gallery, Sydney, Australia | group |
1998 | Autonomous Action | Artspace, Auckland, New- Zealand | group |
1997 | Another Long March | Breda, Holland | group |
1996 | Li Yong bin's videos | Beijing Academy of Fine Arts Gallery, Beijing, China | solo |
1996 | Image et Phénomène | Académie des Beaux-arts de Chine, Hangzhou, China | group |
1996 | Vidéo Sans Titre | Galerie Froment et Putman, Paris, France | group |
1995 | New Asian Art | Osaka, Tokyo, Japan | group |
1994 | Proofs of Life | Juan Jiehu House, Beijing, China | solo |
1994 | Beijing International COM-Art Show, China, Korea and Japan | Capital Normal University, Beijing, China | group |
1992 | New Wave | Chameleon Contemporary Art Space, Hobart | group |