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2026.3.20-2026.4.25

Liu Xinyi: Standby

The Rehearsal Project: A Solo Exhibition Series
  • Duration
    2026.3.20-2026.4.25
  • Opening hour
    Tuesday - Sunday 10:00-17:30
  • Address
    Taikang Art Museum, 1F Taikang Art Museum, Building 1, Yard 16, Jinghui Street,Beijing Taikang Group Building
  • Artist
    Liu Xinyi
  • Curator
    Xin Yunpeng

The first program of 2026 and the sixth installment of the “Rehearsal” solo artist exhibition series. Taikang Art Museum has commissioned artist Liu Xinyi to create a new work, “Standby”.

Liu Xinyi’s work has already been widely discussed within the art world. It is not difficult to see that he is particularly inclined to create within “specific sites.” He is able to skillfully shift between different “languages” to adapt to complex “environments,” drawing everything around him into the context of his work. The more challenging the site appears to be, the more clearly audiences can perceive his personal charisma. Whether in the pristine white spaces of galleries and museums, inside residential apartments, or within idle museum exhibition halls, Liu Xinyi is able to transform them into spaces organically integrated with his work—turning them into the “soil” necessary for his practice, leaving foot prints to guide viewers into his artistic world.

Liu Xinyi is one of the few artists who approaches the question of “difference” from a distinctly personal perspective. Rather than dialectically weighing different voices surrounding various social issues, he refuses to position himself in a fixed place merely to appeal to a fixed audience. Instead, he allows his own complexity to become a stance that must be communicated.

Looking back, Liu Xinyi’s earliest works and projects presented at Taikang also marked the starting point of his awareness of China’s social field. In his early work Pacifying the World (2013), we can glimpse the youthful uncertainty of a young person living within a globalized world while confronting an unpredictable future. A certain systemic crisis began to emerge clearly and decisively in Liu Xinyi’s early works, articulated through a concise and powerful language. These works are “delicacies” that can be tasted without explanation—yet awkwardly difficult to swallow. This is precisely the contemporary context Liu Xinyi brings to us.

The mark of Liu Xinyi’s maturity perhaps does not come from commercial success. On the contrary, many of his most resonant works are difficult for the contemporary art market to digest, and the production budgets for many of them are extremely limited. He has never equated maturity with the “production of symbols,” nor transformed the insight within his works into salable products. Carefully, he stops exactly where he senses he should stop—observing, reflecting, and continuing his work. As a curator working with Liu Xinyi, all I need to do is wait—wait for his thoroughness, and wait for his audience.

Other Information

  • About Artist

    LIU Xinyi (b. 1982, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province) currently lives and works in Beijing, working primarily on installations, as well as still and moving images.Liu pays attention to the messages that arise from the transnational circulation and cross-cultural application of everyday products. His studio work reframes political spectacles originating in the digital public sphere, alongside social installations embedded in daily life. His solo and collaborated projects navigate social spaces shaped by contemporary municipal governance, translating cultural contexts and technological practices that choreograph collective behavior. Liu’s conceptual practice engages the latent structures of the Chinese psyche—veiled in particular phrases and idioms, inscribed in political imagery, and woven into public infrastructure—while imagining the residual roles of the obsolete, the defective, and the untraceable in an increasingly instrumentalized information society.A selection of his solo exhibitions/projects includes, Applause Is Due(2019), DRC No.12, Beijing; Fraternité Passagère (2018), Galerie Liusa Wang & Espace DawanArt, Paris; Air Port (2017), Forum Art Museum, Dongguan; Hundred Thousand Miles Away(2016), White Space Beijing, Beijing; Chaoyang Qunzhong (2015), A307 Space, Beijing; Goulash(2014), White Space Beijing, Beijing and Excitation Waves (2013), Taikang Space, Beijing. His works have been featured in group exhibitions at Hong Museum, Wenzhou; Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong; BY ART MATTERS Tianmuli Art Museum, Hangzhou; OCAT Shenzhen, Shenzhen; HOW Art Museum, Shanghai; Hyundai Motor Studio, Beijing; OCAT Shanghai, Shanghai; Qiao Space & Tank Shanghai Project Space, Shanghai; Busan Biennale 2016, Busan; Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai; CAFA Art Museum, Beijing; OCAT Xi’an, Xi’an; Yuz Museum, Jakarta and Ullens Center of Contemporary Art, Beijing. He was awarded the 2nd Porsche “Young Chinese Artist of the Year”(2018-2019) and was also a finalist for the 4th Art Sanya Huayu Youth Award (2015).

  • About Curator

    Xin Yunpeng，graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts with a Master’s degree in Art in 2016, Xin Yunpeng has been engaged in contemporary art practice since 2007. He currently lives and works in Beijing. His works mainly take the form of installations, videos, and site-specific projects.
    Recent solo exhibitions include The Winds Howl Cannot Silence the Grass (MouMou Space, Beijing, 2024); Multi-Minds (Gravity Art Museum, Beijing, 2023); Simultaneous (de Sarthe Gallery, Hong Kong, 2022); and Friendship First, Competition Second (C5CNM, Beijing, 2020).
    Selected group exhibitions include Zhilan: A Glance in Urban Garden (X Museum, Shanghai, 2024); STUDY II: Natural History, Alternative Knowledge and Deep Learning (ShanghArt, Beijing, 2024); Engaging with the World: Modern and Contemporary Chinese Art Since the Dawn of the 20th Century (Taikang Art Museum, Beijing, 2023); and M+ Sigg Collection: Another Story (M+, Hong Kong, 2023).

INSTALLATION VIEWS