Liu Jianhua was born in Ji'an, Jiangxi Province in 1962. He graduated from the Department of Fine Arts and Sculpture at Jingdezhen Ceramic Institute (now Jingdezhen Ceramic University, China) in 1989. He currently lives and works in Shanghai. Practicing mainly with ceramic and mixed media and reflecting upon the economic and social changes, Liu is one of the most experimental and representative artists in Chinese contemporary art. In 2008, he shifted his focus from globalization and rapid social changes in China to artwork materials by establishing a distant relationship with social development and thereby introducing the concept of “no meaning, no content.” The new approach, exemplified by his work Untitled in 2008, marks a significant exploration of his creative process and allows him to develop his unique expressive system in the landscape of contemporary art.
Liu Jianhua's works have been exhibited in the 14th Gwangju Biennale (2023), the 57th Venice Biennale (2017), the Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennale (2015), the 17th Sydney Biennale (2010), the 2nd Moscow Biennale (2007), the 1st Singapore Biennale (2006), and the 6th Shanghai Biennale (2006), the 50th Venice Biennale China Pavilion (2003), etc. His works have also been exhibited in major art museums such as the Tate Modern (London), the Hayward Gallery (London), the M+ Museum (Hong Kong), the University of Chicago Art Museum (Chicago), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles), and the National Gallery (Singapore). Liu Jianhua's solo exhibitions have been held in art museums and institutions such as the Towada Museum of Contemporary Art (Towada), the Fosun Art Center (Shanghai), and the Made in Cloister Foundation (Naples). His works are collected by the Museum of Modern Art (New York), the Tate Modern (London), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles), the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the Victoria and Albert Museum (London), the Asian Art Museum (San Francisco), the Salvatore Ferragamo Museum (Florence), the Kode Museum in (Bergen), the M+ Museum (Hong Kong), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Towada), the Guggenheim Museum (New York), the Art Museum of New South Wales (Sydney), the Guangdong Museum of Art (Guangzhou), the Queensland Art Gallery (Queensland), the Hara Museum (Tokyo), and other public institutions and private collectors. In 2019, Liu Jianhua's monograph Clinging to the Surface was published by Shanghai SDX Joint Publishing Company. Dr. Wu Hung wrote the preface for the publication.
