Li Hongjun — Removed

Li Hongjun’s sensitive mastery and personal expressions of contemporary art languages enable what he has done to be a valuable personal case in the modern art practice in China. Nowadays he is one of the most striking artists of sculpture in Chinese mainland. Li Hongjun’s particular life experiences have given him dual identities. In the early 90’s he created installations in international exhibitions alongside artists such as Fang Lijun and Xu Bing, but when his wife fell ill he chose to return home and take care of her. In 2006 an admission notice from Central Academy of Art’s Experimental Art Program allowed Li Hongjun, in middle age, to return to Beijing and continue his creation of art. His works are mostly made by paper. His “Myself”, “Expansion”, “Drift Away” and other series used displaced paper, rotation and other methods to combine eastern and western methods of paper cutting, and expressed the distortion of man’s values after encounters with the reality of modern society. Today, his many years of work have given him an outstanding reputation as an installation artist, and he has been called by CAFA’s vice-president Xu Bing “an artist with Chinese folk wisdom”.