Li Rui has a natural obsession and desire to explore nature and life, and most of his works centre around the exploration of life. Previously, he focused on the passing of specimen organisms to demonstrate the primal forces of life and the significance of the co-existence of life and death, while in recent years his research has shifted the focus from objects with vital signs to in-depth contemplation of the connection with the vastness of the universe and the stars through the reality of the physical environment.
The “Star” series is artist Li Rui’s imagination of the cosmic stars, in which a non-objective existence of the celestial system is constructed under his paintbrush. The series is derived from different types of gravel that are collected in different locations, each gravel in its own right gives a variety of meanings and carries different experiences. Like asteroids, they are celestial fragments with traces of life, assembled into an interesting new system that recognizes the macrocosm in the microcosm. Li Rui transforms himself into a star-seeker, crossing the length of time, trying to find traces of human life in the broken and scattered stones. He travelled through different cities, environments, and geographic coordinates according to his life trace, and continuously collected “stars” scattered on the surface of the earth – stones he thought were stars, which originated from the ruins of destroyed buildings and asphalt roads. The cracks on the surface of the gravel are like furrows of life, cutting them into countless fragments of memory, and after external interventions such as vibrations, collisions, and extrusions, more individuals are re-differentiated. Each piece of gravel is a witness to the story, silently telling of the splendour and glory that was once there.
Li Rui graduated from the Oil Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. He has held numerous solo exhibitions in Paris, New York, Beijing, Taiwan, China, and Bangkok, and has participated in international art fairs, international contemporary art exhibitions, and group exhibitions of Asian contemporary art in the United States, Germany, and Beijing. His work has been exhibited numerous times in Korea at the Amway Gallery, the Onyang Folk Museum, and in China at the Tanko Moofland Art Museum, the Guardian Art Center, the Art Museum of Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, the Today Art Museum, the Sishang Art Museum, the Jinshang Museum, the Time Art Museum, the Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum, The Moon River Museum of Contemporary Art, Ku Art Center, Yunnan Literature and Art Museum, and galleries in Chicago and China.
