Exhibition at the Schütz Art Museum - Li Hua

Schütz Art Museum proudly presents Li Hua (*Chongqing 1980)

The horse is a symbol of strength, power and independence in the cycle of Chinese zodiac animals. To mark the current Year of the Horse, shooting star Li Hua is devoting himself to this symbol of the wild. "Painting is passion. Painting is my life. And I am a slave to my painting." The sensitive artist Li Hua responds to the question of "what life is actually about" with the composure of the wise and knowledgeable. Painting is her life, has always been her life, her destiny, her passion, her obsessive passion, says Li Hua, born in 1980. This passion has earned her an award that no female in her home country has ever received before. In 2019, Li Hua received an honor that no woman in China had ever received before. An entire solo exhibition was dedicated to her in her home city, Chongqing, a metropolis of 30 million people. The retrospective was presented in her home city of Chongqing and then in the country's major museums. From an early age, even before she could speak, the artist from a humble background drew. From 2001 to 2005, she attended the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in the Chinese metropolis of Chongqing with its 30 million inhabitants. In 2005, not even 25 years old, this extraordinary talent was one of thousands to receive the LVMH Louis Vuitton-Moet-Hennessy Award, followed by a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service. Exhibitions in Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong and Macao paved the way for further studies at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris, with Daniel Richter at the Berlin University of the Arts and at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts in Erwin Bohatsch's master class.

The central theme of the academically trained painter's work - she completed her doctorate in Vienna in 2014 - is reflections and multi-layered, abstract reflections of existence. Her color palette is expressive, precise, opulent, her application of paint eruptive, powerful, intense, emotional, two-dimensional, sculptural. In addition to oil paints on canvas, Li Hua often uses a mixture of sand as a reference to André Masson, whom she admires just as much as Frank Auerbach, Anselm Kiefer, Eugène Leroy or the German expressionist Emil Nolde. Li Hua also cites Old Masters such as Tintoretto, Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka, whose style is strikingly reminiscent of the portraits she has created, as a source of inspiration. However, spontaneity and emotion are the most important factors in the creation process of her work, she says herself.

The expressive work of this modest shooting star is internationally acclaimed and has already enchanted museums and exhibition spaces in New York, Paris, Salzburg and Vienna. Li Hua uses her art to dissect her surroundings, she dissects, analyzes and reflects the chaos of living together, the chaos of existence in her pictures. Expressive, excessive, eruptive, emotional. Li Hua, outwardly the personified calmness itself, possesses even more levels. Hidden and mysterious. The true essence of her art is its emotionality. Her work is undoubtedly a mirror of the inner life, a picture puzzle of chaotic being, is visualized psychoanalysis.

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SA, SO and public holidays: 10:00-18 h
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