In Florence the solo exhibition of Liu Bolin, the camouflage artist

From Aug. 30 to Sept. 18, 2023, the Sala d’Arme of Palazzo Vecchio in Florence will host the solo exhibition of Liu Bolin (Shandong, 1973), an artist known for his mimetic performances. The exhibition is dedicated to the project Hiding in Florence (2022) and is realized in collaboration with the City of Florence, promoted by Gaburro Gallery and curated by Marco Bazzini.

Hidingin Florence is a continuation and crowning of a larger series, Hiding in Italy, carried out by the artist in Italy, including Milan, Venice, Verona, Rome and Caserta. Liu Bolin pays homage to Florence with this project, involving iconic places in the city: Piazza della Signoria, the Uffizi Galleries, the Marucelliana Library and Palazzo Vecchio itself, which hosts the exhibition.

Referred to as the invisible man, Bolin has made camouflage his hallmark: remaining motionless like a living sculpture, the artist perfectly blends, thanks to careful body-painting, his body with the context behind him, and finally gets himself photographed. Over the years, he has had himself portrayed in front of the world’s most important monuments, works of art, bookstores, supermarket shelves, and mountains of trash. His poetics of hiding, to become a thing among things, aims to highlight emblematic places, known and secret cultural identities, denounce social issues. Each of these places, as well as objects, even the smallest, have a soul that characterizes them and in which to blend in, to vanish, to identify with the Whole. According to Chinese culture, man is part of nature, and in these works, the artist does not disappear but, in fact, joins nature itself.

“Liu Bolin’s exhibition Hiding in Florence, in collaboration with Galleria Gaburro, represents a further opportunity to reaffirm the city’s attention to the dialogue between past and present, to contemporary artists and to the issues of our time, as part of a cultural policy that has this among its priority objectives,” stresses Deputy Mayor and Councillor for Culture Alessia Bettini. “Liu Bolin’s poetics leads us, through his works, to journey through the theme of absence and anonymity of contemporary man, and in this key, it is perfectly grafted into the soul of Florence also thanks to the artist’s look at the city’s material and immaterial cultural heritage. Hiding in Florence has been made possible thanks to the dialogue between the city’s main cultural institutions and the collaboration with the Gaburro Gallery, a fact, which is also relevant, proving a strong synergy between institutions of culture in connecting art with citizens and visitors, thus fostering the growth of a community.”

Hours: Daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Free admission.

In Florence the solo exhibition of Liu Bolin, the camouflage artist

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