Hongrui Henry Liu

Lives and works in London, UK

Artist statement

Hongrui Henry Liu was born in 2000 in Shenzhen, Guangdong, and moved to Hong Kong at the age of seven. He received his BA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins, and subsequently completed postgraduate studies at the Royal College of Art and The Courtauld Institute of Art, moving across the fields of contemporary art practice, art history, and painting. His practice is grounded in constructing “relations between differences,” developing an critical approach through which connections emerge within the staging of difference, making cross-cultural, cross-historical, and intersubjective understanding possible. Each work begins from his reflexive reconstruction of everyday life and memory. Through the processes of visual translation, he continually reshapes memories and experiences spanning London and Hong Kong, gradually attenuating—and at times partially dissolving—their subjectivity. The concepts of “home” and “belonging” are thus displaced from its traditional definition, transformed into structures, forms, environments, and atmospheres, giving rise to a future-oriented visual space charged with potential for new narratives and temporalities. Themes of individual alienation and urban fragmentation surface as he reflects on both the self and the contemporary condition; difference and similarity are articulated through monumental, accumulated forms, dissonant structures, and spatial tensions. The “urban environment” in his work refers not only to the physical city, but also...

Artwork