This is perhaps how many Chinese approach reality. He deals with difficulties and danger in a contrary manner almost randomly changing it into something it's not. Liu Wei likes to employ nudity and sex as well as nauseating or revolting images, basically anything scatological that can have a powerful psychological effect. Even so, his paintings are executed in such a way that the overall look can be strikingly vivid, colorful, bright, even engagingly beautiful. In his works, he employs a highly individualized technique in an effort to deal with, in his own uniquely Chinese manner, many of the new challenges born out of the complexity of contemporary Chinese culture.
Artists often avoid the challenges that arise out of the complexity of contemporary life.
Qi Zhilong employs popular colors and images of today's China to avoid the shady side of this period. In his works, a kind of consumerism quietly transforms history into an antique curio meant for our viewing pleasure. Pretty and beautiful, is what Qi Zhilong is striving for in his paintings. To some degree, his works might even be said to be modern versions of a Chinese classical aesthetic. In many ways, Zeng Fanzhi is the opposite of Qi Zhilong, he avoids the dismal side of history, by very publicly masks himself.