{"id":11134,"date":"2008-04-25T20:20:05","date_gmt":"2008-04-26T03:20:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/jed\/2008\/04\/25\/11134.html"},"modified":"2008-04-25T20:20:05","modified_gmt":"2008-04-26T03:20:05","slug":"falling-into-the-sky-the-art-o","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/2008\/04\/25\/falling-into-the-sky-the-art-o\/","title":{"rendered":"Falling into the sky: the art of Li Wei"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Someone just pointed me to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.liweiart.com\/\">Li Wei<\/a>, a Chinese artist who creates remarkable photos of himself.<\/p>\n<p>They mostly tend to fall into three categories:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Photos of himself head-down, with his head completely submerged in something (water, dirt, a floor, etc).<\/li>\n<li>Sort of the inverse of that: photos of just his head sticking up out of a surface.<\/li>\n<li>The really impressive ones to me: photos of himself apparently defying gravity in various ways.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Some of my favorites:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A bunch of flying people <a href=\"http:\/\/www.liweiart.com\/ART\/liwei\/photo-d\/077-01.htm\">dunking him in a basketball hoop<\/a>. (Sort of combines multiple themes.)<\/li>\n<li>A guy <a href=\"http:\/\/www.liweiart.com\/ART\/liwei\/photo-d\/046-01.htm\">kicking him off a building<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li>Triptych: a woman <a href=\"http:\/\/www.liweiart.com\/ART\/liwei\/photo-d\/047-01.htm\">spinning him around her head<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.liweiart.com\/ART\/liwei\/photo-d\/047-03.htm\">throwing him<\/a>, and him <a href=\"http:\/\/www.liweiart.com\/ART\/liwei\/photo-d\/047-02.htm\">hanging upside down above her<\/a>, kind of a <cite>Spider-Man<\/cite> moment.<\/li>\n<li>My favorite: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.liweiart.com\/ART\/liwei\/photo-d\/040-02.htm\">falling horizontally<\/a> straight out from an office building window.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>(A <a href=\"http:\/\/www.liweiart.com\/ART\/liwei\/Review.htm\/200610a%20mirror%20of%20china.htm\">review <\/a> on Li Wei's site notes that some of his photos bear some resemblance to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Yves_Klein\">Yves Klein<\/a>'s <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Image:Le_Saut_Dans_le_Vide.jpg\">Le Saut Dans le Vide<\/a> (\"Leap into the Void\"); true. But I like Li Wei's renditions better.)<\/p>\n<p>Of course, the obvious question is: were these photos faked?<\/p>\n<p>And the answer appears to be: sort of.<\/p>\n<p>He uses wires, mirrors, and other structural assistance, and then removes the wires from the photos using Photoshop. So the photos are really of Li Wei, really in those places; but the illusion of the absence of gravity is, of course, an illusion.<\/p>\n<p>Note that, as I understand it, he is primarily a performance artist rather than a photographic artist; he does performances, some of which apparently involve holding himself very still for a long time in a particular pose (with his head buried in something, for example), and the photos are sort of (retouched) records of those performances. I think.<\/p>\n<p>If you want to know more about how all this works, you can watch the videos on the site. For example, the video of the being-kicked-off-the-roof photo shows the setup and testing process, with the rope holding him in place clearly visible. Oddly, the guy who's kicking him doesn't appear to have anything holding <em>him<\/em> in place; that ends up looking a lot more dangerous than Li Wei's part.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway. Lots of cool stuff, well worth a look.<\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Someone just pointed me to Li Wei, a Chinese artist who creates remarkable photos of himself. They mostly tend to&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/jed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}