About —
An Te Liu’s imposing installation White Dwarf is on display at the Musée d’art de Joliette for the summer season. The enormous sphere, composed of a multitude of obsolete electronic objects, is presented suspended in the lobby. Both the title and the shape of the artwork refer to white dwarfs, the remains of dead stars. Through this metaphor, the artist evokes consumer culture and our propensity to throw everything away quickly.
Artistic Approach
An Te Liu’s work is characterized by the use and reuse of everyday objects. His reflection is based on our relationship with time and objects, as well as the overconsumption that characterizes our lifestyles. He develops this reflection in installations and sculptures, most of them inspired by used computer and technological equipment and, more recently, by packaging. Liu mingles forms, both old and current, that are imbued with a sense of familiarity. He thus creates ambiguity in relation to the origin of the works displayed and reduces the distinction between ordinary objects and art objects. The reuse of these materials in an art context makes the artworks seem playful; above all, they open a dialogue with spectators, who, faced with these clusters of reinterpreted objects, are confronted with their own habits.
Biography —
An Te Liu was born in Tainan (Taiwan) in 1967. He lives and works in Toronto. An internationally known artist, he has had exhibitions at the Vancouver Contemporary Art Gallery, the Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art (Rotterdam), the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (Copenhagen), the Ursula Blicke Stiftung (Kraichtal, Germany), Ireland’s Biennial of Contemporary art, the Venice Biennale of Architecture, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. His works are included in a number of collections in Canada, the United States, and Europe.