Liu Wei's London show Density packed with vim
In the winter of 2008, visitors entering the Saatchi Gallery in London for the exhibition The Revolution Continues: New Art from China were immediately met with the installation Love It! Bite it! The incredibly detailed work by Beijing-born artist Liu Wei, was a precarious-looking mini metropolis of the West's most iconic buildings-the Guggenheim, the Colosseum, the US Capitol-and it was made entirely out of dog chews. These were, after all, the "tastiest bits" of Western culture.
Fast forward to 2014, and from now until March 15, the White Cube gallery is hosting Liu's first solo show in London. It's the second appearance for the artist's work there-the first was part of an Inside the White Cube exhibition in 2012. The new show, Density, is a collection of new, never-seen-before pieces.
Devotees of Liu will find that Density revisits familiar themes, particularly China's rapidly changing sociopolitical and urban landscapes. Architectural forms feature throughout, evoking the skylines and digital data maps of the artist's Purple Air and Truth Dimension series.