Li Wei is a Chinese performance artist/photographer who mostly produces images of himself falling off buildings, dangling in mid-air or just generally defying gravity. And it's done entirely without Photoshop. Li Wei is ALL about the pulleys and levers.
It's anyone's guess as to whether these photos are infused with actual artistic purpose or are instead inspired by a childhood filled with Looney Tunes' infamous disdain for the concept of 'down'... Although, considering Communist China's general attitude towards the cartoons of our childhood, we could perhaps be certain that the Roadrunner played a relatively minimal role in Li Wei's artistic development. Perhaps 'Worker and Parasite' may have been more on point. Either way, there is little doubt that his images are both beautiful and profound, evoking a loose wonder for the world at the same time as they suggest the semi-visible and all-too-human fractures that line the theoretically well ordered systems of contemporary urbanity...
Yeah, I'm sorry, this blog needed a sentence of art wank sooner or later, and there it was. That was relatively painless though, right? It could have been worse. We could have tied him into a strain of post-colonial, neo-urban utopianism. But we didn't. So here we are. Cool. You'll be ok, kid.
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