Liu Ding: Products

by Nav Haq, Liu Ding

This catalogue features Liu Ding's project entitled "Products" which was presented in the exhibition "Far West" held at Arnolfini, Bristol in 2008. "Far West" is an experimental project that transforms Arnolfini from an arts venue into a distinctive "concept store," that explores the shifting of the economic centre of the world to the East. In the words of Liu, "Products" is a work that transforms the act of "public manufacturing" into "an artist's production." It is an art project that imitates and demonstrates the assembly line of making, producing and displaying "artworks" in a concentrated way within a museum's setup. "I brought into a museum space the painting "masters" from Dafencun, a village in South China whose main industry and reputation is based on mass-producing and exporting classic oil paintings to the West, and invited them to repeat the act of "artistic creation", their actual means of production and living in a museum, which functions in this case both as a regular exhibiting space and as an unconventional production space."

Paperback, 79 pages

Dimensions: 6.75 in. x 9.5 in.