Liu Wei (Chinese: 刘韡; born 1972 in Beijing) is a Chinese artist based in Beijing. He works in varied media – video, installation, drawing, sculpture, and painting – with no uniting stylistic tendency, though the Saatchi Gallery finds a uniting… Liu Wei (Chinese: 刘韡; born 1972 in Beijing) is a Chinese artist based in Beijing. He works in varied media – video, installation, drawing, sculpture, and painting – with no uniting stylistic tendency, though the Saatchi Gallery finds a uniting theme of "a sentiment of excess, corruption, and aggression reflective of cultural anxiety". Conceptualism, satire, and humor are the hallmarks of his works.
His works include the Super Structure series of model cityscapes constructed from dog chews; the Purple Air oil paintings of stylised skyscraper cityscapes; the Landscape Series of landscapes made from photographic composites of human buttocks; and Indigestion II, a two-metre model turd.
He has shown work in exhibitions including 21: World Wide Video Festival in Amsterdam, Cinema du Reel at the Pompidou Centre in France, Over One Billion Served at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver, and Between Past and Future at the International Center for Photography in New York City. His dog chew structures were in 2010 once again shown during the exhibition Dreamlands at the Centre Pompidou in Paris. On October 21, 2025, the Metropolitan Museum of Art announced that Liu had been chosen for the 2026 Genesis Facade Commission; it will be on display September 17, 2026, through June 8, 2027.
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