The Imaginary Museum
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At a first sight, the paintings of Li Shi Guang are quite seductive, composed of familiar elements for both western and Chinese audiences, which entice them into a memory game, trying to decode and recognize the different elements and references that compose the paintings. Looking at Li Shi Guang's paintings is like being put face to face with the understanding of your own culture.
Li Shi Guang's paintings are a complex universe made of numerous references, a time collapsing experience where a Chinese Wall opens to a Magritte sky, where the Turkish bath of Ingres is transferred from Middle East to China...Through these elements, we can see Li Shi Guang's painting as a cynical reading of 19th century European Orientalism. Meanwhile these elements and their semiotic meaning are really important to the definition of a civilization or tightly linked to its perception.
In reference to Andre Malraux who was a famous French writer (about Art and also China) and Minister of Culture under de Gaulle French Government. Like Malraux's Imaginary museum, Li Shi Guang, with humor and finesse, but also social concern offers us through his own reading of art history, a journey into his own universe and contemporary China where cultures and influences from different parts of the world melt into one culture.
- City Weekend
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Artist Li Shi Guang's solo exhibition features seductive works in reference to 19th century European Orientalism. Both Western and Chinese audiences will recognize familiar elements to both cultures in the artist's paintings paired to introduce a contemporary China where international influences are melded into one cohesive culture.
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A Lesson in History Li Shi Guang's Imaginary Museum comes across as some type of art history quiz. Familiar works of art are wittily incorporated in a blend of Chinese and Western, modernity and classicism.
Influenced by the great masters of Western art, such as Manet and Rembrandt, Li has created clever, if slightly kitsch paintings. He takes elements from great paintings that are at the same time well known, yet reworked in a surprising and new way. Taken out of context, male and female figures from The Rape of the Sabine by Poussin become more like a couple in a joyous embrace. In another, two grinning Chinese pose in front of a landscape that we have seen a thousand times in the background of Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, but may have never paid attention to before because of the famous face and smile in the foreground.
Beyond the Western art, those familiar with China can see elements of art and architecture in a half destroyed gray and white wall, the intense red and familiar round tiling of an imperial building or the swirls of mountains and clouds. Modern Chinese women, somewhat blurred, are featured beside sensual Western nudes, some highly representative of the much-debated and maligned 19th century Western school of Orientalism, so beyond the pop-art-like surface there seems to lie a deeper meaning. There is also a sense of division as Li uses walls extensively and the Chinese characters, particularly the peasants, are often marginalized and the modern, cosmopolitan ones indistinct.
A young artist with a fresh approach to the East meets West conundrum and an ideal show for those of you who want to show off your art knowledge. For those who aren't so au fait with their art history, don't worry–-there's a cheatsheet available to guide you through. --Elyse Singleton, Issue 14, Art Review