Oil on canvas

97 × 75 cm. × 2 38 1/4×29 1/2 in.× 2

Signed in pinyin and dated on bottom right of the right piece

LITERATURE
2006, Finding Together: Paintings by Li Qing, F2 Gallery, Beijing, p. 53
2008, Ghosting: Li Qing 2005-2008, Iberia Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, p.52-53
2009, Li Qing: Curtain, Hanart TZ Gallery, Hong Kong, p.45-47
EXHIBITED
9 Sep – 9 Oct 2006, Finding Together: Paintings by Li Qing, F2 Gallery, Beijing
29 Nov 2008 – 18 Jan 2009, Ghosting: Li Qing 2005-2008, Iberia Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing
17 Apr – 3 May 2009, Ghosting: Li Qing 2005-2008, Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art, Shanghai
14 May – 6 Jun 2009, Li Qing: Curtain, Hanart TZ Gallery, Hong Kong

PROVENANCE
Hanart TZ Gallery, Hong Kong
Private Collection, Asia

Contemplating Flux and Eternity
Li Qing's Visual Game

Born in the 1980s, artist Li Qing graduated from the Oil Painting Department of the China Academy of Art and is now an associate professor there. His works explore the disorientating and surreal emotions brought by consumerism, as well as the alienation between people and other collective memories of the era. His works have entered the collections of Deutsche Bank, Institut Valencia d'Art Modern in Valencia, Long Museum and Yuz Museum in Shanghai, and DSL Collection in Paris, among others. In 2017, he became one of the recipients of the Jean-Francois Prat Prize in Paris. In 2023, he was selected as one of Forbes China's Influential Young Contemporary Artists.

Li initiated his Find Discrepancies series in 2005, inspired by the popular Find the Difference game. The series consists of two similar pictures, often featuring images of daily life filled with consumer goods and political propaganda. This is reminiscent of Andy Warhol's similar but non-identical portraits of celebrities and Campbell's soup cans. Employing juxtaposition and gamification, he challenges our habitual ways of thinking formed in daily life.

The Fascinating Game of Find the Difference

Find Discrepancies No. 2 is a reflection of the vibrant and bold colour palettes popular in China's 1980s and 90s, with neon colours stimulating the viewer's visual nerves. An unruly young man in jeans and shortened top, which were fashionable at the time, lies on a bed and stares at the celebrity posters, photographs and newspapers on the wall. The flaking wallpaper and faded, greenish photographs refer to another time and place, capturing the nostalgia for a fleeting moment in time.

Invited by Li Qing's game, the viewer naturally searches for the differences between the two pictures. If viewed from a dialectical perspective, each brushstroke is indeed different, thus shaping two distinct worlds. With his hand drawings, the artist confronts the concrete and infinite reality filled with digital reproductions, blurring the boundaries between pictorialism and computable game graphics. Through depicting fragments of common life, he brings a sense of intimacy and familiarity but also points to the contradictory and arbitrary relationship between reality and the virtual world using overlapping dream-like images. Inevitably, the work gives rise to the ultimate philosophical reflections on similarity and eternity, such as the classical question from ancient Greece: Can one step into the same river twice?

Price estimate:
HKD 100,000 - 150,000
USD 12,800 – 17,900