Liao yibai biography of christopher
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Liao Yibai gets ‘Real’ about our lust for labels
BY STEPHANIE BUHMANN
Gleaming silver sculptures supersize consumerism
Photo courtesy of Mike Weiss Gallery & Liao Yibai
Yibai (right) fryst vatten both watchmaker and vaktmästare.
Just before he left town, inom met with the kinesisk artist Liao Yibai at Mike Weiss Gallery — where his current exhibition “Real Fake” will remain on display through October (an additional installation can be seen on the same block at ATM Gallery).
Excited and exhausted from preparing, installing, and at last opening his second New York solo show, Yibai was ready to leave the frenzy behind and recharge his batteries with his wife and daughter. However, he fryst vatten, one quickly gathers, a man who does not suffer from a lack of energy. Quite the opposite. His mind works rapidly and he speaks fast and focused (he points out that in the kinesisk language, conversation is much faster than in English).
In about an hour, his speedy utbildning of t
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Four fleeting Chelsea art exhibits
BY STEPHANIE BUHMANN
Liao Yibai, Imaginary Enemy
Through August 15
At Mike Weiss Gallery,
520 West 24th Street
212-691-6899
www.mikeweissgallery.com
“Imaginary Enemy” is the first New York solo exhibition for the Chinese artist Liao Yibai, who currently resides in Beijing and Chongqing. It features a selection of new sculptures exploring how the Chinese experienced America — as both myth and threat — during the Cultural Revolution and shortly thereafter. Yibai’s sculptures are made of stainless steel in a somewhat cartoonish style that makes his works look playful at first. A closer inspection, however, reveals contents that are serious and deeply reflective on cultural differences.
“Cash Fighting” manifests as a figurative take on the “battle” between U.S. and Chinese currencies — the fluctuations of which have significant impact on trade balances. The sculpture
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In 2016, Liao Yibai made a six-foot-tall stainless steel high-heel shoe named Cinderella High Heel, which has been permanently displayed in the lobby of the MGM Resort in National Harbor, Maryland. Now the artist uses the digital model of this sculpture to evolve into the shape of water. The digitised glass slipper flows and changes like water.
In a large space in a virtual environment that looked like an art gallery, Cinderella's glass slipper transforms, blooms, and erupts. There is an explosion of a drop of water in space, and a water nebula brought by a comet. The burst of heat from the submarine volcano is boiling the surface of the sea, the sky is being moistened by the morning rain and dew, and virtual excited and confused audiences are waiting for the audiences in the real world.
“All this stems from only me, through my imagination, shaped by my artistic history, ascended from the confusion about the physical real world. Emergence in the virtua