Liu Wei

With Throw a Dice, a site-specific, permanent work created for the entrance of Palazzo Diedo, Liu Wei continues his exploration of sculpture, architectural settings, and the human figure. Welcoming visitors into an immersive environment filled with fantastical animals, this new installation, at once dreamlike and functional, expands on the artist’s ongoing philosophical investigation of what it means to be human. Taking inspiration from the architectural context, the work collapses the distance between past and present.

In Adventure 3, Wei esplora l’umanità e il rapporto tra corpo e materia tramite allegorie teologiche di creazione, salvezza e caduta, riflettendo la trasformazione della vita umana e sociale influenzata da schermi, dati e tecnologie. Adventure 3 è presentato per la prima volta a Palazzo Diedo.

Courtesy of the Artist and Lehmann Maupin, New York, Seoul and London

Wei, in Speculation No.2, employs a visual and cognitive hybrid language with materials and forms evocative of antiquity: the sculpture consists of a metal sphere and a hollow structure reminiscent of natural cave formations. The sketched body of a lion emerges from the cave, almost merging with the structure itself, while its form is enveloped by a snake that extends beyond the main structure into the viewer’s space.