李振威 Li Zhenwei
李振威1987年出生于中国东北。他从五岁起便接受了各种绘画训练，从简笔画到油画，再到中国画。生于信息年代而长于一个渐入盛年的国家，李振威接触到数码技术，并透过互联网与外部世界发生联系。日积月累，这两重世界在他的艺术实践中发生碰撞。他不满足于自己在国内所学的学院式技法，而是开始向内探索，寻求一种于传统于当下皆有意义的、更为深刻的表达方式，一种能够更为清晰地发出他对于高速变化的当代社会里生命、文化以及艺术的拷问的声音。他早已开始沿着这个方向迈步，而在中央美术学院的几年间，他将他所学到和观察到的信息缩减至最为简单的表达形式：点（点、像素、分子）。“一切都是由点构成，所有的线、形状与质量，” “点包含着生命与艺术的全部可能性与复杂性，”李振威如是说。他的画正是由这些简单的形式组成，密度不一的颜料被他从颜料管一点一点挤到赤裸的画布上，笔触在此不再成为必需。有人会用“抽象”来形容他的作品，技术上来说也的确如此，但事实上，他的作品是一门属于他自己的全新语言，这语言诉说着他，一个独特的年轻人，在两种全然不同的世界中成长的体验。亚里士多德的一句名言尤其适合用来形容李振威的绘画，“整体大于部分之和”。李振威对于颜料的选择并非随意，他在作画过程中总遵循着一些隐性的规律。比如，有时他会遵循圆周率π的规律，用这个永不重复永无休止的无理数来决定他画中点与空白的数量与浓度。这些规律向李振威展示了一个交汇点，在此，中国传统的看待宇宙和生命的方式同当今被数字媒体大肆刺激的环境相遇了。看似机械、排复一排、成百上千次被挤到画布上的点状红色颜料聚在一起，却惊人地超越了它们自身，带来一种浪漫可触的感官享受，这片茂密而醉人的红，召唤着人们进入它，品尝它，触碰它。
Li Zhenwei, born in northeast China in 1987, was trained from the age of five years old in traditional Chinese, as well as classical western, drawing and painting. Born in the computer age in a country coming of age, Li was also introduced to digital technology and access to the outside world through the World Wide Web. Over the years of study and life these two worlds collided in his art practice. Not content to rest on his traditional skills he searched within for a deeper means of expression that could make sense of the old and the new, a voice that would actually speak more clearly tohis questions of life, culture, and art in a rapidly changing contemporary world. He had already begun to move in this direction but during his years at CAFA he reduced his learned and observed information to the simplest of gestures, the dot (point, pixel, molecule). “Everything is made of dots, every line, shape, and mass,” “The dot holds all the possibilities and complexities of life and art,” says Li. His paintings are made with this simple gesture, points of paint of varying densities, extruded from a paint tube onto naked canvas, no brushwork needed anymore. One might say that his work is “abstract”and technically it is, but actually it is a new personal language that speaks of his experience as a unique young man growing up in these two disparate worlds. A quote from Aristotle is specifically appropriate to Li’s painting technique, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” Li’s paint application decisions are not random, there are always rules, sometimes Li employs a system based on Pi, a transcendental number that never repeats and never ends, to determine the quantity and thickness of points and spaces. These various systems represent to Li the convergence of ancient Chinese philosophies of viewing the universe and life itself and today’s digitized media hyped environment. The seemingly mechanical application of row after row of 100’s and 1000’s of individual squirts of red paint on canvas all together surprisingly transcend themselves and attain a romantic tactile sensuality, a field of lush hypnotic red that beckons one to enter, taste, and touch.
李振威1987年出生于中国东北。他从五岁起便接受了各种绘画训练，从简笔画到油画，再到中国画。生于信息年代而长于一个渐入盛年的国家，李振威接触到数码技术，并透过互联网与外部世界发生联系。日积月累，这两重世界在他的艺术实践中发生碰撞。他不满足于自己在国内所学的学院式技法，而是开始向内探索，寻求一种于传统于当下皆有意义的、更为深刻的表达方式，一种能够更为清晰地发出他对于高速变化的当代社会里生命、文化以及艺术的拷问的声音。他早已开始沿着这个方向迈步，而在中央美术学院的几年间，他将他所学到和观察到的信息缩减至最为简单的表达形式：点（点、像素、分子）。“一切都是由点构成，所有的线、形状与质量，” “点包含着生命与艺术的全部可能性与复杂性，”李振威如是说。他的画正是由这些简单的形式组成，密度不一的颜料被他从颜料管一点一点挤到赤裸的画布上，笔触在此不再成为必需。有人会用“抽象”来形容他的作品，技术上来说也的确如此，但事实上，他的作品是一门属于他自己的全新语言，这语言诉说着他，一个独特的年轻人，在两种全然不同的世界中成长的体验。亚里士多德的一句名言尤其适合用来形容李振威的绘画，“整体大于部分之和”。李振威对于颜料的选择并非随意，他在作画过程中总遵循着一些隐性的规律。比如，有时他会遵循圆周率π的规律，用这个永不重复永无休止的无理数来决定他画中点与空白的数量与浓度。这些规律向李振威展示了一个交汇点，在此，中国传统的看待宇宙和生命的方式同当今被数字媒体大肆刺激的环境相遇了。看似机械、排复一排、成百上千次被挤到画布上的点状红色颜料聚在一起，却惊人地超越了它们自身，带来一种浪漫可触的感官享受，这片茂密而醉人的红，召唤着人们进入它，品尝它，触碰它。
Li Zhenwei, born in northeast China in 1987, was trained from the age of five years old in traditional Chinese, as well as classical western, drawing and painting. Born in the computer age in a country coming of age, Li was also introduced to digital technology and access to the outside world through the World Wide Web. Over the years of study and life these two worlds collided in his art practice. Not content to rest on his traditional skills he searched within for a deeper means of expression that could make sense of the old and the new, a voice that would actually speak more clearly tohis questions of life, culture, and art in a rapidly changing contemporary world. He had already begun to move in this direction but during his years at CAFA he reduced his learned and observed information to the simplest of gestures, the dot (point, pixel, molecule). “Everything is made of dots, every line, shape, and mass,” “The dot holds all the possibilities and complexities of life and art,” says Li. His paintings are made with this simple gesture, points of paint of varying densities, extruded from a paint tube onto naked canvas, no brushwork needed anymore. One might say that his work is “abstract”and technically it is, but actually it is a new personal language that speaks of his experience as a unique young man growing up in these two disparate worlds. A quote from Aristotle is specifically appropriate to Li’s painting technique, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” Li’s paint application decisions are not random, there are always rules, sometimes Li employs a system based on Pi, a transcendental number that never repeats and never ends, to determine the quantity and thickness of points and spaces. These various systems represent to Li the convergence of ancient Chinese philosophies of viewing the universe and life itself and today’s digitized media hyped environment. The seemingly mechanical application of row after row of 100’s and 1000’s of individual squirts of red paint on canvas all together surprisingly transcend themselves and attain a romantic tactile sensuality, a field of lush hypnotic red that beckons one to enter, taste, and touch.
