By Louise Chen

Originally published on artinfo.com, June 18, 2010

http://www.blouinartinfo.com/news/story/277255/the-skin-of-the-world-an-exhibition-of-li-tianyuans

Although he established himself as a painter, Li Tianyuan recently has been garnering more attention for his photographic works. The Skin of the World, curated by Wang Jiang, includes Li’s most recent large format (8 x 10 film) color photographs, on view at 4-Face Space Gallery June 12–27 in Beijing's 798 art district.

At first glance, Li seems to take a traditional approach to this series of portraits, capturing moments and subjects with subtle lights and shadows evocative of Rembrandts paintings. The juxtaposition of two half-body shots in contrasting tones within a single image adds a sense of depth to the all-black background. “Rather than a conversation, the portraits present the confrontation between the two selves, one as subject and the other object,” commented art critic Gu Zheng at the opening.

The portraits' subjects range from renowned artists and designers to the average student. Each subject embodies his or her distinct social role; each resides in a specific geographic space — so after locating each subject on Google Earth, Li lines the bottom of each photo with the corresponding camouflage-like image cropped from the original panoramic shot. By repeatedly employing the same composition, the artist presents a variety of faces that embody the diversity of the world, raising the question of how we detect the heterogeneity beneath a quasi-homogeneous surface.