First published on ArtSlant China.
Text by Robin Peckham.
LSR
Connoisseur Contemporary
G4, Chinachem Hollywood Centre 1 Hollywood Road, Hong Kong, China
May 6, 2010 – May 28, 2010
The exhibition “LSR” more or less continues Beijing-based artist Li Shurui’s long-standing series “Lights,” based on her aesthetic interest in the LED arrays of skylines and nightclubs alike. Typically painting from photographs, these compositions end up as medium-sized canvases containing nothing but points of light, often showing a framed light pattern at a skewed angle or with other light sources seeping in at the edges. The exhibition title, consisting of the artist’s initials, is obviously a play on certain acronyms reminiscent of the technologies of vision, SLR coming chiefly to mind. In this exhibition, however, Li Shurui moves beyond the apparatus of the lens, now more interested in techniques of symmetry and mirroring. Contrary to the gallery materials, however, this exhibition does not mark a departure by any account: these works remain very much within the narrow style for which the artist is known. If pieces like “Lights 104″ and “Lights 108″ create abstract patterns that set forth from photorealism for the territory of psychological games and the pleasures of a touch more ambiguity, perhaps the artist is hinting at new directions for future image-making.