Liu Xi

Liu Xi makes stories about how we organise our lives. Through history all systems mankind developed, for survival, appears as rituals and ornaments. A development because of the necessity of exploiting everything nature could give.

Liu Xi works with clay in a craft-based and practical way, constantly looking for forceful points of contact between material, technique and form. She creates meanings that people can relate to. There is a lot of unexplored language in clay. There is also a lot of undiscovered language in craft. Shapes emerge as a result of a potent dialogue between herself, the material and the techniques, a dialogue driven by a desire to couple. In her experience, everything can be told and communicated through experience and knowledge of the materials and techniques – by adding and subtracting and knowing exactly when to stop.

Liu Xi closely combines craftsmanship and materials, hands, fingers and eyes, playfully seeking to unveil the clay’s vital, undiscovered potential, something she has not seen before, where formations and surfaces allow for further development. The clay is plastic. It can be shaped how she wants it and retain the shape it has at the point when she choose to stop the process. She uses clay as an instrument for exploring texture, structure and form, colour and construction. Her goal is to generate new knowledge, new meaningful visual reflections. Disturbing and ambiguous, immediate and overwhelming, beautiful and repulsive. All of this combined to form a readable whole of vital individual details – the encounters, proportions and precision striking a perfect balance: like a killer punch to the solar plexus.

Her work process in the clay material offers a lot of resistance, and she gets to know more of the forces over which she has no control; the incalculable elements in her inner being. Emotional discharges become embodiment of feelings, and the works become actual experiences themselves.

A continuous dialogue between knowledge, practice and cruel critical reflection.

-- Statement by Torbjørn Kvasbø

Through ceramics, I explore how we organize our lives. With clay as my medium, I am able to constantly seek forceful points of contact between material, technique, and concept, both literally and figuratively. Born in 1986, I grew up in a village in Shangdong before studying sculpture at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing (B.A. 2010). By adopting the practical methods of craftsmen in my sculpture, I feel both these influences, and become ever convinced that mastery of material and technique allows for communication in its deepest sense. I am fortunate to have been able to communicate with others across Europe and Asia through exhibitions in China, the UK, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Spain, Portugal, Norway, and Ecuador.

— Liu Xi