Liu Ding – Rice Mango Pork… and Ghosts

Mostra personale

Comunicato stampa

Primo Marella Gallery is proud to present the new Liu Ding solo show.
A new chapter in the artist's investigations into the legacy of Socialist Realism in China. These investigations have taken the form of re-enactments of the visual culture of SR, and the development of propositions pertaining to its continuing influence as a tenacious ideological apparatus in contemporary, globalized life.

The current show, ‘Rice, Mango, Pork … and Ghosts’ develops two strands of Liu’s art: the role of the painted image in making concrete SR’s imagery, that imagery’s propagation out into the world, and the way the painted canvas can be used as a field of contestation for the meanings of these images; and the role of photography as a contemporary revelation of SR’s presence in society, providing panoramic views of its traces within everyday life, and holding those images for future analysis.

One consequence of Liu’s collage method is that by directly bringing together and addressing these signs and their relationships, Liu Ding’s paintings themselves enter into the general economy of symbols, reconfiguring the relations and values that these symbols represent. They no longer act as carriers of the ideology they were designed for, whether that of “Communist” China or “Capitalist” America. Society is the canvas on which globalisation is negotiated, where these latent ideological processes can become realised and adapted, but to what end we cannot predict.

Edward Sanderson