Liu Bolin
Currently based in Beijing, Liu Bolin was born in Shandong in 1973. He graduated from Shandong Art College in 1995 and later received an M.F.A. from the Central Academy of Fine Arts. His work has been widely exhibited in Europe, the U.S. and China.
Working in a number of mediums, Liu Bolin’s work reflects an insightful examination of contemporary Chinese society and the experiences of the people within it. His art touches on a sense of adaption an individual in contemporary China must undergo as he navigates through a landscape of change and liberalization. It is a traumatic change that imposes a bipolar culture in which tradtion and foreign influence, the old and the new, are in conflict with each other, seeking our new horizons.
His giant Steel Fist—authoritarian in both in size and form—puts forward the the internalized feeling of totalitarianism experience still present in his native China. He brings to the surface the idea of the invisible hand that is so ever present in the minds of the people, and makes it into a tangible object, materializing the very idea of the effect of the government Chinese society. Perhaps, the emblematic sculpture is an artistic statement that reflects the questioning of what currently passes for democracy within the Chinese state.