Installation View of Liang Yuanwei: Pluviophile
"Rain" in Liang Yuanwei's latest series of oil paintings embodies the dynamic momentum of brushstrokes, the very act of painting. We have never truly witnessed rain without motion—rain is a verb. "Rain" is Liang’s revelation of painting as action, unreserved.Liang demands that her canvases bear no signs of revision. This discipline asks absolute commitment to each stroke, while allowing the interplay of gestures, their connections and contrasts, to generate a unique pictorial tension.
Installation View of Liang Yuanwei: Pluviophile
Working with diluted oil paint heightens the challenge of control and compels the movements to be more coherent and compact. While mastery is often born of repeated practice—“practice makes perfect,” Liang consciously pursues a “de-familiarization” of her own technique. For this exhibition, she has set aside fine brushes in favor of coarse implements—scrapers, round cutouts—to spread and texture the paint. New color combinations are introduced between two superimposed layers of diluted paint, generating chromatic shifts that extend beyond her familiar palette.
Installation View of Liang Yuanwei: Pluviophile
Early Spring W.BP-. Y.O.B- (detail), 2025; Oil on linen, 140x120cm
Rost Rain 01 W.OR-.B- (detail), 2025; Oil on linen, 140x120cm
The thinly applied surface is repeatedly worked in varying directions and pressures, gradually exposing the layer beneath. In what Liang calls a form of “extremely limited sculpture,” light is invited to penetrate across the color strata and directional marks, activating a continuous visual fluctuation between the “figure” and the “ground.”Through gestures that feel unfamiliar to her painting practice, the artist comes to sense a certain quality inherent in the movement itself. While the nature of these movements does not change with repetition, their texture grows increasingly vivid through recurrence. In Liang’s latest paintings, each movement is nested within a localized web of surrounding marks, while formally resonating with other gestures across the canvas. These conjure textures from the wider world, evoking a resonant tremor between the painting’s interior and the world beyond it. Within this ongoing, vibrating relationship with the world, the painting’s "content" emerges and recedes.
im Kugelhagel Wh.YeGrUm.Br-(detail), 2025; Oil on linen, 190x160cm
Americano Hero (Black Coffee) 01 W. BR.-B-(detail), 2025; Oil on linen, 190x160cm
“Pluviophile” is formed from “Pluvio” and “-phile.” Any noun may precede “-phile”; here, “-phile” is a verb. “-phile” signifies Liang Yuanwei’s act of painting from within the world. Such an action draws no meaning from its poles—the beginning and the end, the subject and the object, the “self” and the world; it unfolds through continuous return. It does not move outward toward the world to claim it as its own; rather, it vibrates from within it, alongside it. Through the relentless repetition of this motion, Liang Yuanwei never establishes nor acquires a fixed relationship with the world. Instead, she weaves self and world into a dynamic, interlaced grain.
About the Artist
Liang Yuanwei was born in 1977. She graduated from the China Central Academy of Fine Art, where received her BA and MA degrees. She currently lives and works in Beijing. As one of the most important emerging artists of the generation, Liang has exhibited her art at various spaces including Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing), Museum of China Central Academy of Fine Arts(Beijing), Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum (Shanghai), Berkeley Art Museum (Berkeley), and Foundation Joan Miró (Barcelona). She was also one of the participating artists of the China Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011). Her solo exhibitions include One Obejct (Hunan Museum, 2019), Behind the Curtain (Palazzo Pisani-Conservatorio de Musica, Venice, 2017), Oval (Xi’an OCAT,2015), The Tension between a Bow and an Elephant (Pace London, 2014), Pomegranate (Beijing Commune, 2013), Golden Notes (Beijing Commune, 2010), 51m: 15# Liang Yuanwei (Taikang Space, 2010), and BLDG115 RM 1904: Liang Yuanwei’s Solo Show (Boers-Li Gallery, 2008). Golden Note was selected by ARTFORUM magazine as one of the most valuable painting shows in 2010, and The Tension between a Bow and an Elephant was listed in ArtInfo’s ‘Must See: 5 London Shows Opening This Week’. Her works have been included in publications such as Younger than Jesus (Phaidon, 2009) and Vitamin P2 (Phaidon, 2011). Her recent exhibitions include Everyday Legend (Shanghai Mingsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, 2016); Chinese Whispers-Uli Sigg Collection (Kunstmuseum Bern, Bern, Switzerland, 2016); My Generation: Young Chinese Artists (Tampa Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg; Orange County Museum of Art; 2014-2015) and Focus Beijing: the De Heus-Zomer Collection (Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 2014).
About the Exhibition
Dates: 3 January–5 March 2026
Venue: Beijing Commune
Courtesy of the Artist and Beijing Commune, edited by CAFA ART INFO.
