SQUARE SUCCESSION & EPHEMERAL EFFLORESCENCE

Photographs by Jie Liu

Opening on October 11, 7 PM Introduction by Prof. Dr. Christoph Schaden, photo historian and publisher, Cologne The artist will be present.

Starting October 12, the HENN Gallery in Munich will showcase a selection from the series SQUARE SUCCESSION & EPHEMERAL EFFLORESCENCE by Chinese photographer Jie Liu. The work consists of two interconnected series of images created in the Netherlands, Spain, and Germany, among other locations.

At first glance, the architectural and plant images present a stark contrast. The architectural photographs in the SQUARE SUCCESSION series are characterized by a monochromatic background that highlights the structural forms and colors of the buildings. The clear emphasis on architectural shapes and structures, along with Liu's eye for geometric patterns, reveals his artistic interest in abstract painting. Although the photographer commits to utmost objectivity in his approach, he ultimately stages the individual buildings against a highly simplified background: stripped of their urban context, they appear as hyperreal entities.

In stark contrast, the EPHEMERAL EFFLORESCENCE series features images of subtropical flora captured in greenhouses. Unlike the architecture, which he always observes from a distance, Liu here presents an intricate interplay of plants up close, nearly filling the entire frame. The cool and surreal light that permeates all the images ultimately bridges the gap between architecture and the plant world: the colorless light and the monochromatic background align both the isolated structures and the staged naturalness of the plants toward a thematic focus. In this way, Liu skillfully navigates the fine line between the real and the artificial world through photographic means.

JIE LIU
Born in 1977 in Xi'an, China, he studied sculpture from 1997 to 2002. Since 2003, Jie Liu has lived in Germany, where he studied Fine Arts at the Kunsthochschule Kassel from 2004 to 2011. He studied photography with Bernhard Prinz from 2006 to 2011. Jie Liu lives and works in Munich.