Li Wei, Liu Bolin, Guido Daniele, Veruschka and Emma Hack. Reality Check
It’s not everyday that we look twice or question what we are being shown in order to work out exactly
what is happening before our eyes. I’ve gathered 5 artists that you may have seen already but whos work
non the less, provides us visually, with good old fashioned ‘ value for money ‘.
Li Wei (born in 1970, Hubei, China) is a contemporary artist from Beijing, China. His work often
depicts him in apparently gravity-defying situations. Wei started off his performance series, Mirroring,
and later on took off attention with his Falls series which shows the artist with his head and chest
embedded into the ground.
His work is a mixture of performance art and photography that creates illusions of a sometimes
dangerous reality. Li Wei states that these images are not computer montages and works with the help
of props such as mirror, metal wires, scaffolding and acrobatics.
The work of former supermodel ” Veruschka” Vera Lehndorff and Holger Trülzsch back in the 1970’s
was probably an early influence on some of the other body painters in this blog. I remember seeing these
images in the eighties and being stunned by the idea and the quality of the painterly disguises.
More recently Liu Bolin (born 1973 in Shandong, China) is a Chinese artist known for taking
photographs of himself, painted in order to blend in with the background. He graduated from the
Sculpture Department of Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.
Since his first solo shows in Beijing in 1998, Liu Bolin’s work has received international recognition.
It took me a few seconds to find him in the tractor scene above. Another contemporary artist
Emma Hack describes herself as a skin illustrator and has taken the themes of conceal and reveal
to new extremes. I love this textile and wallpaper series she has done with people and animals.
And Finally we have the work of Guido Daniele who is another self painter who initially concentrated
on ‘hands’ being his theme.
He has also managed to get a whole advertising campaign out of this concept, very clever.
More recently his work involves painting the nude form but I still feel the hands are the most impressive.
