Born in Chongqing in 1981, Shurui Li is a 2004 graduate of the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute. Shurui Li has been hailed as a leading emerging female Chinese artist by The New York Timesand International Herald Tribune and is one of the few women to hold solo shows in China’s commercial art galleries. She is exploring in a wide range of media the relationship between space and light, with painting and installation.
Forbes Life Style and Editor Y-Jean Mun-Delsalle writes “Today, Li is recognized for her large-format, captivating acrylic-on-canvas compositions executed with the airbrush, which explore an abstract concept of light, guaranteeing that audiences will never look at light and color in the same way again. Light and color, as we know, share an intimate relationship, for what the eye perceives to be a certain hue is because that shade is reflected while all other colors are absorbed when light shines on an object. Li also professes a close relationship with the theme of “space”, as the immensity of her artworks allows viewers to feel completely surrounded and fully engaged. However, her aim is not so much to convey a viewpoint as to provoke emotions. She elaborates, “I try to use light and space to capture an atmosphere and state of mind in a way that leave people with a strong emotive impression rather than a concept or idea that must be dealt with logically.” Chinese Artist Li Shurui Creates Optical Illusions Through Her Semi-Abstract Light Paintings, May 26, 2015.
In 2013, she participated in ON | OFF: China’s Young Artists in Concept and Practice, which was regarded as a landmark exhibition showcasing artists representative of the country’s new generation.
Li Shurui has been exhibiting widely in Asia and Europe. Her work was included in the Estrella Collection. Solo exhibitions include: ‘Monadology’, White Space Beijing, Beijing, China; The Shelter: All Fears Come from the Unknown Shimmering at the Edge of the World’, White Space Beijing, Beijing, China. Recent group shows include: ‘No Longer / Not Yet’, Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, China; 28 Chinese – Rubell Family Collection’, Asian Art Museum and San Antonio Museum of Art,San Francisco and San Antonio, USA; ‘Jing Shen – The act of painting in contemporary China’, PAC Museum of Contemporary Art, Milan, Italy; ‘The Making of a Museum’, Aurora Museum, Shanghai, China; ‘ON|OFF China’s Young Artists In Concept and Practice’, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA), Beijing, China; ‘Long March – A Walking Visually Display’, Long March Space, Lugu Lake, China.