Li Qing explores new roles of painting beyond mere representation, in a propaganda-heavy society where an image is complicated by the internet, mobile devices and apps. Li’s binary format—diptychs of identical pictures or views framed within a window—emancipates narratives from confines of fact, to negotiate contradictions between reality and truth.

Works on view include a new body of work from Li’s window paintings, which he began around 2013 to explore postcolonial urbanism in Shanghai. The new works take Shanghai and its name (“a sea port” in English) as a point of departure to address the notion of the sea as a transformative force in urban communication, transportation and economy, as well as the cause of both revolution and catastrophe. For the window piece, Li paints an unlikely landscape directly onto the back of a glass panel within a time-worn household window frame collected from the process of Shanghai’s gentrification. The installation transports painterly manipulation into architectural engagement, leaving narratives to unfold into broader interpretations across multiple dimensions.

Exhibition view of Li Qing: SEASCAPES, Frame at Frieze New York 2017, New York

Exhibition view of Li Qing: SEASCAPES, Frame at Frieze New York 2017, New York

The video work--Sea has montaged numerous scenes of people seeing the sea and walking to the sea which all come from different films worldwide. Thereinto, the routine of “facing the sea” represents over and over again and the sea and the people who face the sea and walk to the sea form a set of stacked symbols. The work not only represents the inherent spirits’ similarity of people in the complex world, but also unveils the versinnlichung and ambiguity of image media.