THE SHOPHOUSE is pleased to present Wuhan based artist Li Chuangli’s first solo exhibition in Asia, titled Portrait. Featuring a series of new work on canvas centering on the theme of portraiture, Li explores his understanding of modernity and postmodernity, examining the subtle evolution of imagery and painting in a consumerist society, as well as the resulting phenomenological transformation in human perception.

Since 2023, Li has been creating paintings of the MT8 chrome-plated steel tube table lamp designed by Wilhelm Wagenfeld nearly a century ago. This lamp symbolizes the Bauhaus style born of the industrial renaissance era and stands as an emblem of modernity. The artist anthropomorphises it into a series of portraiture, thereby alluding to the individualistic tendencies of postmodernism. This series of work engages with the historical narrative of art-making, showcasing the overlapping shadows of time, evolved from religious subjectivity, to a modernist human-centric approach, and finally the contemporary individualistic expression.

In this series, Li further explores the painting and compositional techniques of portraiture. Smooth and tonally pleasing, Li's imagery appropriates graphic design elements such as borders, colour blocks and collage motifs, akin to eye-catching product advertisements found in shopping centres or magazines – enthralling and visually satiating the capitalistic desires of the contemporary audience. Moreover, the disjointed and jarring lines within the imagery evoke the borders of screens inherent in interfaces of contemporary media. This recalls the act of scrolling through images, marking a shift in viewing: from the tangible analog to the continuously flowing planes of digital screens. Through painting, Li elucidates how contemporary image production and viewing experiences blends the virtual with the real and the physical with the ephemeral, revealing the drastic shift in human perception at the turn of the century with the proliferation of digital screens.

In the final section of the exhibition space, the artist ingeniously incorporates two personal portraits, Portrait - The Twilight of Modernism 015 and Portrait 023, which are juxtaposed against the MT8 lamp, a metonymy of modernity. These works place artificial light and natural light in adjacency, reflecting the contrast between the life of an artist and a contemporary urban dweller, and the constant oscillation between the two. The yellow frame and spatial division in Portrait 023 further accentuate the "flatness" of the beautifully rendered figure, a quality that reveals a specific texture ubiquitous in contemporary imagery.

THE SHOPHOUSE欣然呈獻駐武漢藝術家李創李於亞洲的首次個展，「肖像」（Portrait），展出一系列全新布面作品。展覽以肖像為載體，展示李創李對現代性與後現代性表徵之理解，探討消費主義領導的當代社會下，影像與繪畫的細微演化，乃至人們觀看與感知世界方式已然發生的變異。

自2023年起，李創李便開始創作MT8 鍍鉻鋼管檯燈的繪畫，這盞於100年前由設計師威廉·瓦根費爾德（Wilhelm Wagenfeld）設計的檯燈，不僅象徵因工業時期的文藝復興而誕生的包浩斯（Bauhaus）風格，更是現代性的表徵。然而，藝術家卻擬人地把它繪畫成一張又一張的肖像油畫，藉此暗指傾向個人主義的後現代視角，其系列繪畫彷彿映照出時代的疊影，藝術的主體由戰前的宗教化、走到現代的以人為本，繼而是當代的個人主義。

藝術家進一步廷伸這些肖像的構圖與繪畫方式。李創李的圖像平滑而色澤舒適，更挪用平面設計的邊框、色塊與拼貼原素，猶如一幅幅在購物中心或雜誌中引人注目的產品廣告，如此的讓人愛不釋手，填充觀者的滿足感又引發慾望。再者，畫面中的錯置與突兀的分界線，更令人聯想起使用社交媒體，滑動影像時圖像之間的邊界，映射在當今世代裡觀看的動作，已由實體轉移至電子螢幕那不斷流轉的平面之上。李創李透過繪畫此一媒介，闡明了當代的影像生產與觀看經驗，如何虛擬得真實、實體卻虛擬，展現出廿一世紀人類視覺轉換的落點。

於展場空間的最後部份，藝術家加入兩張個人肖像《Portrait - The Twilight of Modernism 015 》與《Portrait 023 》，並置象徵現代性的檯燈。兩張作品巧妙地把人造光線的黃昏並置自然光線的黃昏，作為藝術家自身或當代城市人的生活寫照，總是遊離於兩者之間。然而《Portrait 023 》中那黃色邊框與空間分割，更顯唯美背影的「單薄」，而這種「單薄」亦顯示了存在於當代影像中的一種質感。