An INTERMEZZO, PERHAPS
2025.04.04-2025.07.06
ARTIST: LI RAN
Exhibition curator: YAMIN WANG
Beiqiu Museum of Contemporary Art is honored to present An Intermezzo, Perhaps, a solo exhibition by Li Ran. Curated by Wang Yamin, this exhibition showcases key works from the artist’s practice in recent years alongside his latest art pieces. The exhibition will officially open to the public on April 4, 2025, and will run until July 6, 2025.
The term intermezzo originates from the evolution of Western theater, denoting an interlude staged between the two acts of a play. During this interval, fatigued or restless audiences would eagerly welcome a performance entirely detached from the main drama—ranging in intensity from subtle satirical humor to a full-blown revelry that dissolves the boundary between stage and spectators. Borrowing and reinterpreting this concept, the artist uses it as a dramaturgical parallel for his firsthand experiences in the contemporary Chinese art scene from 2008 to 2015, and again in the present day: An Intermezzo, Perhaps. Between one grand narrative and the next, successive acts unfold—each convinced it is the true center stage.
This notion of an intermezzo embodies the paradoxical dramaturgy of the contemporary art scene—for instance, its fervent yet desolate existence, its oscillation between narcissism and detachment, the tension between the private and the public, and the existential anxiety of self-positioning. These contradictions crystallize in the artist’s repeated, almost satirical renderings of the “little politics” of the petite intellectual class. Here, the collective muscle memory of Chinese contemporary art remains entangled with that of the petite intellectual class in China’s modern historical trajectory, haunted by its lingering specter. Suspended between culture and reality, between China and the world—do we find ourselves caught in the intermezzo of an unfolding epic?
Over the past five years, Li Ran appears to have undergone a quiet yet deliberate transition—one in which the formal aspects of his practice, or rather the evolving shape of his work at this stage, have been temporarily placed within something called “painting”. At this moment, the artist’s mind seems to be steeped in a kind of “19th-century world”—a so-called “age of painting.” Or, as a fellow artist once put it, is Li Ran simply performing as a painter? Beyond the “little politics” of the petite intellectual class, the artist sees the contemporary art scene as obsessively fixated on a kind of “political correctness” in discussions of artistic medium—amplifying a narrow, limited perspective on the medium, especially when it becomes overlaid with ideological concerns of “little politics”. In an age where software reigns as the ultimate meta-medium, have all the once-celebrated distinctions between artistic mediums now dissolved into irrelevance?
Beyond engaging individuals and their shared sensibilities, this intermezzo mode of viewing unfolds as a more expansive synecdoche for the structural contradictions embedded in Li Ran’s artistic practice. These contradictions manifest in the interplay between film and painting, between text as writing/reading and image as analog/production, between self-performance and reflexive viewing, between the internal and external mechanisms of the art world, between autonomy and heteronomy—among many others. More crucially, however, moving beyond these intermezzo contradictions compels us to step back and confront a “total theater” —one in which we are all, inevitably, cast as participants. At this very juncture in the 21st century, what roles are we destined to play? Are we merely enacting the figure of a little artist of our time, or are we stepping into the role of a general artist? And how, then, should we perform?
li ran
Artist
Li Ran was born in Hubei, China in 1986. He relocated from Beijing to Shanghai in 2018. He graduated from the Oil Painting Department of Sichuan Fine Arts Institute in 2009 with a bachelor's degree. In 2015, Li Ran held a solo exhibition at the Xi'an of OCT Contemporary Art Center. His single - screen video works have been screened at institutions such as the M+ Museum in Hong Kong, the Thorvaldsens Museum in Copenhagen, the Jewish Museum in New York, the ICA in London, as well as at numerous independent film festivals and art festivals.
His works have also been exhibited at art institutions around the world, including the NYU Shanghai Art Center, Shanghai, China (2025); the Tank Shanghai, Shanghai, China (2024); the Star Museum of Art, Shanghai, China (2024); the Hong Art Museum, Suzhou, China (2024); the X Museum, Beijing, China (2024); the Donlon Art Museum, Shanghai, China (2023); the Tai Kwun Contemporary, Hong Kong, China (2023); the BY ART MATTERS 天目里美术馆，Hangzhou, China (2023); the Sangwidae Art Center, Seoul, South Korea (2022); the He Art Museum, Foshan, China (2022); the Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing, China (2021, 2015); the OCT Contemporary Art Center (Shanghai), Shanghai, China (2021, 2019, 2014, 2013); the Inside - Out Art Museum, Beijing, China (2020); the HOW Museum，Shanghai, China (2019); the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing and Shanghai, China (2023, 2017, 2013); the Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2017); the Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Manila, Philippines (2016); the OCT Contemporary Art Center (Shenzhen 馆), Shenzhen, China (2016, 2013, 2012, 2011); the NTU Centre for Contemporary Art, Singapore (2015); the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco, USA (2014); the Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany (2013); the BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht, Netherlands (2013); the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Houston, USA (2012), etc.
He has participated in the Beijing Biennale (2022), the Montreal Biennale (2014), the Geneva International Festival of Films on Art (2014), the 4th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art (2014), the 2nd CAFAM Biennale (2014), the 4th "Former West" Project in Berlin (2013), the 9th Gwangju Biennale (2012), and the 7th Shenzhen Sculpture Biennale (2012). He won the "Best Artist Award" at the 2014 Moscow International Biennale for Young Art and was shortlisted for the "Future Generation Art Prize" at the PinchukArtCentre in 2017.
wang yamin
Curator
Wang Yamin, a Doctor of Literature, is an art creator and curator. Currently, he serves as the curator and Director of the Academic Department at the Art Museum of Nanjing University of the Arts. Wang Yamin regards art exhibitions and performances as an increasingly important medium for artistic creation. He has curated dozens of exhibitions and events for domestic and international artists and creators. Recently, he has mainly focused on issues such as the re - trans - individualization of the public in the reality of contemporary technological culture and the re - creation of daily life. He has participated in art projects and held exhibitions in China, the UK, Germany, etc., and his writings have been published in various art periodicals, magazines, and exhibition literature.