Li Hanwei

CV

New Communication

Artist: Li Hanwei

Opening: September 4, 2022, 14:00–16:00

Exhibition Dates: September 4 – October 3, 2022

Venue: chi K11 Art Museum, B3, K11 Art Mall, 300 Huaihai Middle Road, Huangpu District, Shanghai


From September 4 to October 3, 2022, chi K11 Art Museum in Shanghai will present New Communication, a solo exhibition by artist Li Hanwei. Taking place in Gallery 5, the exhibition will feature five newly created installation works. Drawing on a vast array of raw materials found and purchased online, Li reassembles, reconstructs, and stages them in the exhibition space through a cinematic montage approach, creating humorous narratives where the virtual and the real coexist.

The intrusion of technology into the human body, cultural vision, and living space—and the consequent reconfiguration of perception, particularly for users of the simplified Chinese internet—has been a consistent thread throughout Li Hanwei’s practice. His complex and multilayered installations weave together narratives of work, life, and desire, translating them into visual form. Information and emotions dispersed across the simplified Chinese internet are deftly collaged and integrated, shaping a phenomenology of Chinese internet media with a distinctly personal style.

Li employs the content, advertising language, aesthetics, and ideologies of internet platform corporations to examine their role in shaping global capitalist culture. His works challenge the neoliberal tendencies and consumerist ideologies pervasive in the internet economy, while remaining firmly rooted in the globalized culture of technology, consumerism, organization, and information transmission in contemporary society.