Purple Air II No. 8
Liu Wei
刘韡
Production date
2006
Object Detail
Media
oil on canvas
Measurements
300 x 380 cm (diptych)
Notes
Purple Air 1 (2006) is one of an ongoing suite of paintings produced by computer-generated imagery. These dense compositions are often vividly coloured, with flat opaque surfaces comprised of vertical bands reminiscent of the new skyscrapers dominating Chinese mega-cities; they are filled with edgy, jittery energy. The dominant warm grey tones seen in Purple Air 1, in repeated verticals of varying widths, are interrupted by narrow horizontal lines of pink, blue and yellow. The effect is of graphed urban data, or a field of cyber-world electronic information. Disrupting the verticals on the right of the composition, a black shape can be interpreted as a bare-branched tree or, alternatively, as the exuberantly looping whorls of powerlines in Beijing. A moon in the top left corner is surrounded by rings, as if seen through a veil of pollution. The artist says grey is the colour of China — architecturally it is certainly the colour of the oldest parts of Beijing — but it is a colour made by mixing together many other hues. The ‘purple air’ refers to Beijing’s notorious air quality, and also references a Taoist myth: ‘purple air’ described the ‘qi’ or energy that arrived auspiciously from the east and opened up the universe.
Accession number
2007.063