Li Hui: CAGE

Opening: Thursday, June 23, 2011, at 6.30 p.m.
Exhibtion Dates:
June 24, 2011, until October 1, 2011
Monday through Saturday: 11 a.m. until 6 p.m.
Closed July 25 - August 14, 2011
Admission is free.

For the opening we kindly ask for registration under anmeldung(at)scheringstiftung.de.

Ernst Schering Foundation
Unter den Linden 32-34 | 10117 Berlin | Germany

On June 23, 2011, the exhibition “CAGE” by Chinese artist Li Hui will open at the Ernst Schering Foundation’s Project Space on Unter den Linden. In his works, Li Hui creates unreal situations that have a dreamlike quality. In the exhibition room, the visitor is temporarily and randomly surrounded by a cage made of laser beams. Hui uses the cage, which encloses but does not harm the visitor, to explore individual boundaries and demonstrate how people are influenced by purely optical – though physically irrelevant – barriers.

Visitors are confronted with both a liminal and a powerful visual aesthetic experience. The installation not only makes the visitor “inside the cage” examine his or her feelings, the “outside” observers, too, can watch the experiment and behavior of “those trapped inside.”

For Li Hui, materials such as acrylic, LED and laser light are the key elements of his installations and sculptures – not because he wants to demonstrate what the technology and the material can do, but to trigger feelings. Though Hui claims to be an apolitical person, his high-tech works criticize the problems of modern industry and the growing materialism of our times. Born in Beijing in 1977, the artist has already had much-noticed solo exhibitions in China, Taiwan, Indonesia, and at the Light Art Museum in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. In parallel with the exhibition at the Ernst Schering Foundation, Li Hui’s work is on view as part of the “Car Culture” exhibition at the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe.

The artist will be in attendance at the opening on June 23, 2011. Andreas Schmid, a Berlin-based artist and expert on contemporary Chinese art, and Li Hui will hold a gallery talk to provide background information on “CAGE” and insights into the Chinese arts scene.

“The fusion of art and technology has to reveal a truth about humanity,” says the artist who makes ingenious use of the most advanced technology to create impressive works of art. For the Ernst Schering Foundation, “CAGE” clearly combines science and art: an aesthetic work of art, it is at the same time a scientific experiment that intervenes in, or influences, human action.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a lecture entitled “The Mysterious Light – Laser as a Tool for Art and Science,” also organized by the Ernst Schering Foundation. Ernst Peter Fischer, scientist and historian of science, will give an introduction into the development and uses of laser technology and talk about the perspectives it offers for art and science.

Accompanying Programme

June 23, 2011, 7 pm
Artist Talk
Li Hui (artist) and Andreas Schmid (artist and contemporary Chinese art expert)

June 23, 2011, 7.45 pm
Award Ceremony for Ernst
Schering Foundation’s Project Space
as “Selected Landmark 2011 in the Land of Ideas“
Juliane von Trotha, “Germany - Land of Ideas“ initiative
Steven Wolf, Deutsche Bank

August 31, 2011, 7 p.m.
Das geheimnisvolle Licht – Laser als Werkzeug für Kunst und Wissenschaft (Lecture in German)
Prof. Dr. Ernst Peter Fischer
Extraordinary Professor for the History of Science, Ruprecht-Karls-University Heidelberg, Author and Publicist

Photos: CAGE
Laser, metal, fog machine
200 x 200 cms, height variable
Courtesy of Li Hui und THE MINISTRY OF ART

Photographer: Li Hui