李姝睿 | 碧虚

我们高兴地宣布李姝睿在空白空间的第四次个展"碧虚"（Something Comes from Nothing）将于2025年5月17日开幕并持续至7月12日。本次展览将呈现其最新的绘画创作。

展览以唐代诗人张九龄"修竹含清景，华池澹碧虚"为灵感，通过绘画作品，探索水作为"神性存在"的哲学意涵，并以此延展对生命、能量及虚实本质的思考。此次展览不仅是李姝睿近年来迁居洱海后创作脉络的集中呈现，更是其在"光"与"抽象"的创作线索之外、向着更多维度感知世界迈进的实践。

三年前，李姝睿迁居大理洱海边，这片宽阔的水体逐渐成为其创作的核心意象。展览标题作品《碧虚》以1.8米见方的画面呈现一汪托举光斑的绿水，虚实相生的笔触中暗含艺术家对水的复杂情感：它既是物理性的存在，亦是超越能量的载体。李姝睿拒绝将水简单"女性化"----"水的洪荒之力超越性别与文明，祂是神性的"，艺术家以"祂"指代水，既是对传统符号的颠覆，亦是对自然力量的敬畏。

哺育生命的亲身经历与洱海的潮汐节律意外交织，形成此次展览中作品的独特创作语境。哺乳期的“白色溪流”、孕期汹涌的泪水与洱海的波光共同构成了"体内水系与外界水体的共振"。艺术家坦言，这段经历迫使她以"躺平的视角"凝视水面，在身体的脆弱与自然的永恒之间，重新理解生命的聚合与消散。

妈妈你勇敢一点 Mommy Be Brave，2023-2025，布面丙烯 acrylic on canvas，180×360 cm，图片由艺术家和空白空间提供 Courtesy the artist and WHITE SPACE

在东西方的绘画传统中，水常常作为另一事物的对照或陪衬，李姝睿试图跳出这一框架，捕捉水作为主体的"动能"与"不可规训性"：如在《妈妈，你勇敢一点》（2025）中，光斑如弦上振动的能量，穿透水雾升腾为斑斓的云霞，再凝为雨滴回归大地，循环往复。

尽管常被指认为抽象画家，李姝睿却质疑"抽象"与"具象"的二分法。展览的深层逻辑源于李姝睿对物理学与佛学的兴趣与交叉探索。弦理论中粒子即振动的发现与《心经》"五蕴皆空"的哲思形成奇妙互文：若万物本质皆为能量振动，则"抽象与具象的界限无非是人类画地为牢"。这一认知也直接体现在其创作方法论中----如果说早期作品《深白》（2017）是以点阵模拟光的理性秩序，那么《夜涌》（2025）则在色块交融间引入"失控的轻盈"：在画面的结构中，点与线虽仍然构成了李姝睿标志性的视觉，但于远处遥望，画面中的水汽挣脱重力升向高空，汇聚为星辰；于切近处端详，流淌的水体又在坠落中与光共舞。这种"有序中的无序"既是艺术家对现时生命状态的回应，亦是对存在本质的思考："我们皆是虚空中振动的能量，聚合为'我'，又消散于无。"

夜涌 Night Surge，2024，布面丙烯 acrylic on canvas，160×480 cm，图片由艺术家和空白空间提供 Courtesy the artist and WHITE SPACE

White Space is pleased to present "Something Comes from Nothing," an exhibition of new paintings by Li Shurui, open from May 17 to July 12, 2025. This is Li's fourth solo show with the gallery.

The exhibition takes inspiration from a verse by the Tang Dynasty poet Zhang Jiuling: "Tall bamboos steeped in the serenity of morning light, the splendid pond cradles sky's mirrored blue." The title of the exhibition, "Something Comes from Nothing" is adapted from the word bixu in the original poem. Referring to the reflection of sky in water, the word literally translates to "azure void," which forms the philosophical core of the show. In this new body of paintings, Li explores water as a "divine presence," extending into meditations on life, energy, and the nature of reality and illusion. A crystalized expression of Li's artistic development following her relocation to the Erhai Lake region, the exhibition marks a new direction in her practice, as she moves beyond the conceptual threads of "light" and "abstraction" and toward a multidimensional perception of the world.

梦 A Dream，2025，布面丙烯 acrylic on canvas，180×180 cm，图片由艺术家和空白空间提供 Courtesy the artist and WHITE SPACE

Three years ago, Li moved her home and studio to the shores of Erhai Lake in Dali. This vast body of water has since seeped into her practice as a central motif. The titular work of the show, Something Comes from Nothing, portrays a shimmering expanse of green water on a 1.8-meter-wide square canvas. Through an interplay of form and void, her brushwork portrays the complex emotional connection the artist has with water—both a physical matter and a vessel for transcendental energy. Li refuses to simply "feminize" water: "The primordial power of water transcends gender and civilization; Ta is divine." Here, the artist uses the Chinese character "祂" (Ta), which is traditionally adopted as a pronoun for deities, to refer to water. The deliberate choice of word subverts conventional symbolism and expresses reverence for the power of nature.

The works in the exhibition emerged from the artist's embodied experience of motherhood, as her own bodily rhythm found unexpected echoes with the tidal cycles of Erhai Lake. Collectively, the "white streams" flown during breastfeeding, the overwhelming tears of pregnancy, and the shimmering light reflected on the surface of Erhai sound "a resonance between the internal and external water systems, bodily fluid and natural hydrology." As the artist candidly expresses, this experience has forced her to look at water at "a reclined vantage." As she negotiates between the fragility of body and the permanence of nature, new understandings of life's coalescence and dissipation arise.

云压轻雷 Huddled Clouds Soft Thunder，2023，布面丙烯 acrylic on canvas，180×360 cm，图片由艺术家和空白空间提供 Courtesy the artist and WHITE SPACE

In both Eastern and Western traditions of paintings, water has often served as a contrast or backdrop to other subjects. Li attempts to step out of this framework and capture the "kinetic energy" and "unruly nature" of water as a subject in its own right. For example, in Mommy Be Brave (2025), flecks of light visualize the vibration of energy on a taut string, piercing through water vapor to become iridescent clouds ascending, before condensing into raindrops that return to earth—an endless cycle.

Although often deemed an abstract painter, Li questions the dichotomy between abstraction and representation. The exhibition's conceptual substrate stems from Li's cross-disciplinary exploration of physics and Buddhist philosophy. String theory's discovery that particles are essentially vibrations finds unexpected cross-pollination with the teaching of Heart Sutra—that "all five aggregates are empty": if all matter is fundamentally energy in oscillation, then "the boundary between abstract and figurative is but a human-imposed confinement." This understanding has directly informed Li's methodology. If her early work Deep White (2017) represents the order of reason by simulating light through dot matrices, Night Surge (2025) blends a "lightness out of control" into the intermingling fields of color. In this new work, dots and lines remain the signature of Li's compositional vocabulary. Viewed from a distance, misty water breaks free from gravity and rises toward the sky as stars, while a closer inspection shows cascading liquids dancing with light. Such "order within disorder" serves both as the artist's response to the current condition of her own life as well as a meditation on existence itself: "We are all vibrations in the void, condensing into 'self' before dissolving into emptiness."

碧虚 Something Comes from Nothing，2024，布面丙烯 acrylic on canvas，180×180 cm，图片由艺术家和空白空间提供 Courtesy the artist and WHITE SPACE

关于艺术家

About the Artist

研究“光”和“色彩”的本体及其所负载的文化内涵是李姝睿艺术实践的核心。艺术家坚信在不同的文化和时代里，“光”和“色彩”的运用都能反映、记录和塑造时代中个体需求和精神状态，更与广义的集体意识形态相关联。近年来，艺术家发展出更综合性的工作方法系统，并从切身的生命经验出发，以极具个人化的绘画方式及其延伸实践，探讨绘画本体边界及光与色彩的功能性、社会性、政治性等。

李姝睿，1981年生于重庆。2004年毕业于四川美术学院，获亚洲文化协会（ACC）2016年纽约奖助金驻留项目。近期个展包括：碧虚，空白空间，北京，中国（2025）；人工情绪，Carl Kostyál，伦敦，英国（2024）；震荡的高光，龙美术馆，上海，中国（2021）；浪荡在抽象与具象之间，Carl Kostyál，米兰，意大利（2020）；LSR·多情，New Galerie，巴黎，法国（2018）；光的萃取，Salt Project，北京，中国（2018）；LSR · 深白，空白空间，北京，中国（2017）。近期的群展包括：柏拉图的阶梯，颂艺术中心，北京，中国（2024）；等待的剧场，萃舍云集当代艺术收藏中心，南京，中国（2023）；多重景观——龙美术馆十周年特展，上海，中国（2022）；Good Pictures, Jeffrey Deitch，纽约，美国（2020）; Restons Unis: You’ll Never Walk Alone，贝浩登，巴黎，法国（2020）; 李姝睿 - Zevs，New Galeries，巴黎，法国（2019）；Only Connect!，Braverman Gallery，特拉维夫，以色列（2019）；经由时光的九次旅程，余德耀美术馆，上海，中国（2019）；万物灵源，龙美术馆，上海，中国（2019）；漫游者之歌，空白空间，北京，中国（2019）；Who Cares，New Galerie，巴黎，法国（2019）；经由时光的九次旅程，米兰王宫，米兰，意大利（2018）；一沙艺世界：探索社会几何形态，三亚·亚特兰蒂斯，三亚，中国（2018）；星群，格鲁吉亚国家博物馆，第比利斯，格鲁吉亚（2017）；No Man’s Land: Women Artists from the Rubell Family Collection，国际女性艺术博物馆，华盛顿，美国（2016）；转向：2000年以来的中国当代艺术，上海民生当代美术馆，上海，中国（2016）；已然／未然，民生现代美术馆，上海，中国（2015）。出版物包括：Vitamin P2, PHAIDON 2011；Younger than Jesus Artist Directory: PHAIDON 2008等。李姝睿现工作生活于北京和大理。

The study of “light” and “color” and their cultural connotations constitute the core of Li Shurui’s artistic practice. The artist is convinced that the use of “light” and “color” can embody, record, and shape individuals’ needs and spirituality in different cultures and times, which is also related to their collective ideology in a broader sense. In recent years, the artist has developed a more comprehensive system of work methods. Drawing from her life experiences, Li Shurui explores the boundaries of the painted medium, as well as the functional, social and political nature of light and color through a highly personal approach and its extended practice.

Li Shurui (b. 1981, Chongqing) received her BFA at Sichuan Fine Arts Institute (SFAI) in 2004. Li was granted 2016 New York Fellowship Program of Asian Cultural Council (ACC). Recent solo exhibitions includeSomething Comes from Nothing, WHITE SPACE, Beijing, China (2025);Artificial Emotions, Carl Kostyál, London, UK (2024); High Light: Splendor Worn Thin in the Recesses of Time,Long Museum, Shanghai, China (2021); Somewhere Between Abstract and Concrete, Carl Kostyál, Milan, Italy (2020); LSR·Tenderest Affection, New Galerie, Paris, France (2018); Light Extracts, Salt Project, Beijing, China (2018); LSR·Deep White, WHITE SPACE, Beijing, China (2017). Recent group exhibitions include Plato’s ladder, Soul Art, Beijing, China (2024); A Theatre of Waiting, The Cloud Collection, Nanjing, China (2023); Multiple Sights——The Tenth Anniversary of the Long Museum, Shanghai, China (2022); Good Pictures, Jeffrey Deitch, New York, USA (2020); Restons Unis: You'll Never Walk Alone, PERROTIN, Paris, France (2020); LI Shurui - Zevs, New Galeries, Paris, France (2019); Only Connect!, Braverman Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel (2019); Nine Journeys Through Time, Yuz Museum, Shanghai, China (2019); Spiritual Origin, Long Museum, Shanghai, China (2019); A White Space Odyssey, WHITE SPACE, Beijing, China (2019); Who Cares, New Galerie, Paris, France (2019); Nine Journeys Through Time, Palazzo Reale, Milan, Italy (2018); A World in a Grain of Sand : Mapping Shapes and Sites for Social Deometries, Atlantis, Sanya, China (2018); Constellation, Georgian National Museum Dimitri Shevardnadze National Gallery, Tbilisi, Georgia (2017); No Man’s Land: Women Artists from the Rubell Family Collection, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C., USA (2016); Turning Point: Contemporary Art in China Since 2000, Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, China (2016); No Longer / Not Yet, Minsheng Art Museum, Shanghai, China (2015). Her publications include: Vitamin P2, PHAIDON 2011; Younger than Jesus Artist Directory: PHAIDON 2008. Li Shurui currently lives and works in Beijing and Dali.

画廊开放时间 Opening hours：周二-周六 TUE-SAT 11:00-18:00

北京市顺义区金航东路3号院D7栋1层F1, BLDG D7, Yard No.3, Jinhang East RoadShunyi District, Beijing