Whitestone Gallery Beijing is pleased to announce that it will host “Empty Mountain, Living Forms”, an exhibition by artist duo Li Wei and Liu Zhiyin, from October 31 to December 19, 2026. Curated by Duan Shaofeng, the exhibition takes the artists’ brand-new series of works from recent years as a central thread to trace their ongoing exploration of sculptural language and formal expression. As a duo with a long-standing collaborative practice, Li Wei and Liu Zhiyin began researching the formal language of traditional Chinese sculpture in 2016, seeking to reinterpret it through contemporary lived experience and cultural experience. Over the course of a decade, this exploration has gradually evolved into the body of work presented in this exhibition. During this period, the two artists also experienced movement and migration across different cultural geographies in China, which became both a source of inspiration and a turning point in the development of their latest series.

Taking “Empty Mountain, Living Forms” as its theme, the exhibition continues the Eastern aesthetic sensibility that has consistently informed Li Wei and Liu Zhiyin’s sculptural language, while the idea of the “empty mountain” further reveals the poetry and philosophical reflection embedded in their practice. During a period of living at the foot of the Helan Mountains, the artists reconsidered sculpture and their perception of reality through sound, breath, and visual imagery, in their encounters with nature and in the concreteness of everyday life. These experiences became the point of departure for the works in this exhibition. While their practice takes the natural setting of the “empty mountain” as its source, it does not seek to reproduce nature in a naturalistic manner. Instead, the cultural traditions they carry, their contemporary lived experiences, and their ideas about sculpture intertwine to give rise to the vital forms presented throughout the exhibition.

About the Curator

Duan Shaofeng

Duan Shaofeng is a curator and writer. He holds a PhD from the Central Academy of Fine Arts and currently teaches at the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts. He also serves as a researcher at the Institute of Contemporary Art of the China Association for the Promotion of Culture and Art Development, the Olympic Art Research Center at Tsinghua University, and the Jiangsu Center for Art and Science.