MIXED MAZE: Liu Bolin

28 November 2008 -20 January 2009, the Red Mansion Foundation gallery, London

Liu Bolin 2008, Telephone Booth, Hiding In The City Series, , 80 x 63.3cm, 1/8. Read review

Liu Bolin was born in 1973 in Shandong and graduated in 1995 from the Art Department of Shandong Arts Institute with a bachelor's degree. In 2001, he graduated from the Sculpture Department of Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, with a master's degree

At first glance, Liu Bolin’s “camouflage art” is exactly that, the artist painted to blend, with exquisite detail, into his surroundings. However, there is a deeper complexity to his work, as Bolin seeks to question the nature of mankind, and specifically how we seek to camouflage our emotional selves. Do we create our selves as animals, or humans? Most animals live in harmony with their environment, creating habitats and protecting themselves through concealment and adaptation. Humans conversely seek to manipulate and destroy natural environments to best suit our needs, or the remove ourselves as far as possible from our “base” form. Through presenting humans camouflaged in artificial surroundings, Bolin questions whether we ourselves are natural, or artificial? We seek to elevate ourselves outside of the natural world, but this in turn alienates us and upsets the balance from which we came.

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