Born 1981, Zhejiang Province, China
Li Qing is one of a new generation of Chinese artists. His current series of paintings are collectively entitled Point out the Difference and are based upon a computer game which tests the player’s visual perception. Like a magazine puzzle, Li Qing presents the viewer with a diptych of two seemingly identical images. Their comparison demands close scrutiny by his audience in order to discover its true but slightly concealed purpose. Close examination reveals minute differences between the two paintings as if they are two snapshots of an event taken in very quick succession. The subject of these paintings ranges from the social and historical to the highly personal. Li Qing paints scenes from the Communist revolution as readily as he paints them from ordinary daily life. They may portray dancing in the street, an international conference or a statue of Chairman Mao. The binary nature of Li Qing’s work has been seen as reflecting the social transition that has been taking place in China for the past thirty years. As if his paintings have an allegorical dimension that expresses the huge shifts in material prosperity and social conditions that are occurring within China as the old and new combine in a frequently uneasy mix of changing reality. In Beauty’s Gone 2006, Li Qing portrays the funeral of Princess Diana. As with all his work, it is painted meticulously in oil on canvas.