Biography
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| LI LEI Biography |
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Li Lei was born in Shanghai in October 1965. He was drawn to Art at a very early age, and subsequently devoted himself to painting. Drawing on China's 3,000 years of cultural héritage, he aspired to a modem pictorial expression without the loss of his own identity. His research propelled him towards the abstract, culminating here in a series of works steeped in memory, resonating with the Chinese soul and his own new contemporary vision. Exploring a universal language accessible to onlookers from all countries, overstepping the boundaries of the Oriental world, he found a path between Chinese culture and an international artistic language with his own highly personal form of Chinese poetic abstraction.
His sources of inspiration are many and varied, including Zen and flower gardens, the illustrated poems of Wu Yi, the silent spirituality of water, the stillness of China's lakes imbued with mist and mystery and memories of southern China's tales and legends.
His works have already been exhibited in Beijing and Shanghai, as well as New York, Frankfurt, Linz, Amsterdam, Brussels and Rome. In France, he is currently represented by ARTFRANCE in Paris, where some of his canvases are permanently on display. Since 1996, a number of books, monographies and exhibition catalogues have been published on his works in China, several european countries and the United States.
When he is not slaving away in his artist's studio, Li Lei keenly follows China's growing art movement. passionately channelling his efforts into the cultural life of Shanghai where he fulfils increasingly important rôles.
At the start of his career, he was General Secretary of the Young Artists' Association at the Shanghai Cultural Bureau, Vice-Director of the Fine Arts Section and the Art Education Library at the Shanghai Cultural Bureau. He subsequently became Vice-Director of the Arts section of the Municipal Culture Administration, in charge of radio/television programmes and educational films, and Vice-Administrator of the Institute of Painting and Sculpture in Shanghai.
At present, he is the Executive Director of the prestigious Shanghai Art Museum, Vice-Président of the Shanghai Academy of Plastic Arts and the Academy of Young Literature. He is also a member of the Shanghai Artists' Association and the Chinese Artists' Association.
Li Lei with Zao Wou Ki
