Contemporary by Angela Li is proud to present “Mystified”, the third Hong Kong solo exhibition of Chinese artist Lv Shanchuan. The exhibition features paintings from two of his latest series, Flowers and Skeleton.

The flower is a symbol of organic vitality, and a schema capable of infinite change and allegory. Meanwhile, the skeleton has opposite connotations. The two often appear together both in art history and current popular culture. Lv Shanchuan has imbued the flower motif with the conceptuality of painting, and the normally light flower is transformed to become heavier than most canvases can bear. Beneath this spectacle of flowers of epic proportions, there lies the seed of violence. Its inner energy seems ready to burst forth at any moment. The combination of skeletons and flowers is a nod to classic art history, as well as a continuation of the artist’s probing of image and society of the spectacle, depictions of the decay and disintegration within the depths of the spectacle of capital that reveal the humanistic laments that lie beneath the flourishing surface.

Lv Shanchuan (b.1969, Fujian, China) graduated from the department of Fine Art at the Fujian Normal University in 1992 and completed his postgraduate studies at the Central Academy of Fine Art in 1997. He taught at the Fujian Normal University from 1992 to 2009, and went to Germany on the Sino-German Cultural Exchange Scholarship for further studies in 2005. He currently lives and works in Beijing.

Lv has held solo exhibitions and participated in group shows throughout China, Asia, Europe and the USA. Previous important exhibitions include: “Landmark – Mapping Contemporary Chinese Art” (Beijing, 2017), “The Land is So Rich in Beauty” (Hong Kong, 2017), “Spectacle” (Hong Kong, 2016), “China 8 – Chinese Contemporary Art Exhibition” (Germany, 2015), “Epoch Writing: Chinese Contemporary Art Invitation Exhibition / The First Round” (Epoch Art Museum, Wenzhou, 2015), “The Unknown State” (Beijing, 2015), “Events 2008 ― with China” (Today Art Museum, Beijing, 2014), “The 9th Florence Biannual Exhibition ― Ethics as the DNA of Art” (Italy, 2013), “In Contemporary ― China Fine Arts Biannual Exhibition” (Beijing, 2012), and “The 8th Shanghai Biannual Exhibition” (Shanghai, 2010). His works have been collected by the National Art Museum of China, Shanghai Museum of Art, Chengdu Museum of Contemporary Art, King Kuei Art Foundation and other international public institutions.