Liu Ke

Born in 1976 in Ningxiang, Hunan, Liu Ke graduated from the Department of Oil Painting of the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts in 2003. He is currently a professor at the Academy, the Vice Dean of the School of Painting and the Head of the Department of Oil Painting. He is also the Executive Director of the Boxes Art Museum and the founder of Sabaki Space in Guangzhou. He uses vertical lines to create works limited to the relationship between vertical lines where they press against each other through the repeated overlays, with the intention of allowing the viewer to become aware of the potential tensions between objects and space. The gradual division method in his work, where the image is divided by dense vertical lines and then becomes an overlay, with the gaps becoming more narrow, and the gaps cohering a concentrated force, revealing energy through the collision of vertical or horizontal blocks. The abstract symbols and intriguing colors are used to allow the viewers to voyage through a mystical 'vortex' of art. The shift of the plane and the 'point' created in the dichotomy between the material level and spiritual level form a passage from the starting line and the gaps of the overlays to the two-dimensional and three-dimensional worlds, while entangling the everyday emotional fragments in the picture.