Li Shuang

As the French critic Michel Nuridsany wrote: "While the Chinese art world is going through a phase of unrestrained modernity, Li Shuang’s oeuvre is striking for its lack both of contemporary references and of all sense of febrile haste and by its intensity. This is because her art developed separately from the Chinese context, which encouraged a style of painting which reached its apogee in 1999-2000 – a style which in no way reflected her own experiences. Her strongest advantage has been her silence. Her aura. But first and foremost, her admirable sense of light"

2010 “The Butteryfly Dream” Dialogue Space, Today Art Museum, Beijing, China

2010 China Guardian, May 15, 2010, 134.400 CNY, oil on canvas

2009 Li Shuang's collages Galerie du Triangle, Lyon, France

2009 Xileng, Hangzhou, China, January 3, 2009, 168,000 CNY, oil and canvas

2009 Ravenel, Taiwan, June 7, 2009, US$19,800, oil and canvas

2008 “Return of Light” Willem Kerseboom Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands

2008 Zhongcheng, Taiwan, June 8, 2008, US$31,700, oil on canvas

2008 Sotheby's, New York, March 17, 2008, US$12,500, oil and paper

2007 Galerie du Triangle, Lyon, France. Linda Gallery, Singapore. Cathy Gallery, Paris, France

2007 Bukowski's, Stockholm, April 27, 2007, 16,900 €, oil on canvas

2007 Artcurial, 20th Century Chinese Art, Paris, June 5, 2007, 1080 €

2007 Artcurial, Paris, June 5, 2007, 16,100 €, oil on canvas

2007 Sotheby's, New York, March 25, 2007, US$17,000, oil on canvas

2006 Linda Museum, Beijing, China. Galerie du Triangle, Lyon, France

2006 China Guardian, Beijing, November 22, 2006, 285,000 CNY, oil on canvas

2005 Galerie du Triangle, Lyon, France. DeArte Gallery, Nantes, France

2005 Sotheby's, Hong Kong, October 24, 2005, 276,000 HKS, oil on canvas

2004 Galerie du Monde, Hong Kong. Cathy Gallery, Paris, France. Galerie du Triangle, Lyon, France.

2003 China Guardian, Beijing, November 25, 2003, 41,800 CNY, oil on canvas

2002 Cornette De Saint Cyr, Paris Drouot, February 27, 2002, 3,500 €, oil on canvas

1996 China Guardian, Beijing, October 1996, 22,000 CNY, oil and college on canvas

1989 Art & Communication Gallery, Paris, France

1986 Pontius Gallery, Mountain View, CA. Ingrid's Gallery, Los Angeles, CA

In 1984, Li decided to leave China and reside in Paris to pursue her art study. She began to understand and analyze western aesthetic conception but remain her Chinese artistic root. She has taken part in many group exhibitions, including a tenth-year reunion of the Stars Group in Hong Kong in 1989, another Stars exhibition in Tokyo in 2000, and a retrospective exhibition in Beijing in 2007. She has also exhibited at many shows in her own right in galleries worldwide, including Paris, Amsterdam, New York, San Francisco, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing, and her works have been sold at auction by Sotheby's and Christie's. In March 2010, Dialogue Space in Beijing opened Li Shuang's solo exhibition “Butterfly Dream”, presenting spiritual works inspired by Zhuangzi's Taoist classic.

In 1979, together with Ma Desheng, Wang Keping (王克平), Huang Rui, Qu Leilei, Ah Cheng, and Ai Weiwei, Li Shuang was member of the Stars Art Group (星星 - Xīngxīng), a group of untrained, experimental artists who challenged the strict tenets of Chinese politics. As a political and artistic group, they staged exhibitions around Beijing, making way for avant-garde art in China. Li Shuang was the only female artist founder of the Stars. Li exhibited in both the historic shows of 1979 and 1980. Her works were featured in all the Stars group shows, The Stars: Ten Years, 1989 (Hanart Gallery, Hong-Hong and Taipei), Demand for Artistic Freedom, The Stars 20 Years, 2000 (Tokyo Gallery, Tokyo), and the retrospective exhibition in Beijing in 2007: Origin Point (Today Art Museum, Beijing). According to The New York Times, she was described as the most intellectual female artist in the era of post-Cultural Revolution in China.

Li Shuang began showing her work in China as early as 1979 at the Stars exhibit at the Huafangzhai Gallery in Beijing. Her paintings have appeared in various exhibitions worldwide, including San Francisco, New York, Paris, Amsterdam, Singapore, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Beijing.

After Li Shuang graduated from high school in 1976, she and her schoolmates were deported to the rural area of Beijing and started farming for the next three years. During her spare time, Li kept practicing drawing and studying art for her ambition to attend professional art school. However, due to her special family background (Father was charged), Li's dream did not come true in the end. Fortunately, she was discovered later by some of her artworks and accepted into China National Youth Theater as a stage designer. Then she became well known for her contributions to the academy.

Li Shuang (李爽, born 1957 in Beijing), is a contemporary Chinese artist.

Li Shuang was born in Beijing in 1957. Both of her parents graduated from Beijing University. During her childhood, she was majorly influenced by her grandfather, an antiques, books, and artworks trader who traveled between Asian and Western countries. However, after the Cultural Revolution took place in Beijing, her family was deteriorated by the Red Army. She recalled, "It was a cold winter at my age of 13, I was sitting on a square chair in the house, staring at my father’s working desk. He has been imprisoned and interrogated by the local academy for 3 months because of his storage of foreign literature and art work. All the possessions were confiscated and the house filled with emptiness and solitary. I wanted to draw the table on a paper, as if my father was using it to read and write. Since then, I picked up the brush and stepped on the path of drawing, even until now.”