LIU BOLIN

VISIBLE INVISIBLE

The Chinese performer known for his mimetic photography on display at Mudec Museum from the 15th May to 15th September 2019

The worldwide famous Chinese artist Liu Bolin (Shandong, 1973) is known to the general public for his mimetic performances, during which, thanks to an accurate body painting, his body is fully camouflaged integrated with the background.

Iconic sites, social issues, cultural identities known and hidden: Liu Bolin takes over the art of hiding in order to become thing among things, in order to highlight that every place, every object, even the smallest, has a soul. A soul that characterizes them and in which it is possible to disappear.

Contradictions between past and present, between the power exercised and the one suffered: this is the interpretation opposite and complementary on the nature of things, documented by Liu Bolin’s images. Exposé? Critical reflection? Political and social dispute? Liu Bolin’s artworks have several levels of interpretation, beside the expressive immediacy. Behind the photographic image that is captured in a instant there are the study, the installation, the painting, the artist performance: a process of realization that lasts even various days. As demonstration of how a photographic artistic image is never the result of chance, but the synthesis of a creative process often really complex, which reveals the artist conscience and his intimate knowledge of reality in all its complexity.

This is an interpretation of photographic performance that the space MUDEC PHOTO embraces fully, not limitating itself in this way to host only canonical photographic exhibits, broadening its view to the realm of photography ‘before the shot’, to the universe of formative research that it is in itself artistic performance, emotional engagement, waiting of the perfect moment, inner concentration and team work and finally the shot.

MUDEC PHOTO hosts its second photographic exhibition from its opening (in December 2018 with the exhibit Steve McCurry Animals) and let Liu Bolin narrates his art firsthand, with a performance specifically created for the MUDEC Museum. The performance has as background the iconic pieces of its permanent collection, a month prior of the exhibition opening.

The exhibit “Visible Invisible” is conceived ad hoc for Mudec exhibition spaces, produced and promoted by the City of Milan-Culture, MUDEC and 24 ORE Cultura- 24 ORE Group, in collaboration with Boxart Gallery and curated by Beatrice Benedetti.

On display about fifty artworks by Liu Bolin, among them the unreleased Rondanini Pietà shot at Sforza Castle in Milan and the photography – never seen before - of Caravaggio’s Room realized in 2019 at Galleria Borghese in Rome, along with the image shot at MUDEC among the finds of the permanent collection of the museum.