Skip to product information
LIU YEFU: JOHN LENIN | August 3 - September 7, 2023
“I hurt for each side in this war. I wanted to give color to Szemeredi’s theorem, to turn a mathematical proof into artistic work, into something on the scale of a movie. I am certain that mathematics is worthy of this. I wanted to help people escape distortions and logical contradictions, to find and formulate their own model of the world.“ – Konstantin Olmezov
Having relocated from Beijing to Baltimore a year ago, the artist Liu Yefu adapted John Lennon's iconic "Imagine" as a prelude to commemorate the Ukrainian mathematician Konstantin Olmezov, who tragically took his own life. These peculiar scenes, crafted through video and ink drawing, emerge from Liu's engagement with daily news and social media. They serve as reflections of the modern human predicament: a paradox where we recognize the lessons of the past but still repeat them, where apparent logical coherence is riddled with flaws, and where one may appear cheerful and outgoing in public yet suppressed and sorrow in solitude. As you wander through the exhibition, you are bound to experience fleeting moments of joy, hints of melancholy, and occasional instances of both clarity and bewilderment. The project “John Lenin” at the ARTING Gallery continues Liu's on-going exploration to conservatism and progress, the elite and the grassroots, confronting the awkwardness between theory and reality, leap into the void, and challenging people's stereotypes and biases.