Liu BOLIN

"I choose to blend in with the environment. Some would say that I disappear into the landscape; I would say it's the environment that takes hold of me."

 

Liu Bolin is a contemporary Chinese artist. An invisible man, hidden under many layers, Bolin is sometimes a sculptor, sometimes a photographer, sometimes a performer. He creates works combining photography, body art, optical art, and living sculpture. This human chameleon poses for hours in front of a wall, a landscape, or a monument so as to blend into the background - eyes closed, his silhouette barely visible - with the help of his assistant painters, but without any digital effects. At the end of the camouflage process, he preserves the performance with photography. Touching on major themes - politics and censorship, Chinese tradition and culture, consumer society and freedom of the press - his art evolves in a singularly effective fashion, perfectly in tune with the era in which the world finds itself immersed: it makes itself invisible to be noticed.