Liu Di is a Chinese artist who uses digitally manipulated photographs to highlights the relationships between nature and human society.
Liu Di got the idea for his “Animal Regulation” series (2008) on a bus ride through the crowded suburbs of Beijing. “Looking out at the decrepit housing blocks, I had a vague but strong feeling that there was something missing between the ground and the sky,” he recalls.
He felt the urge to add something that would make people take a fresh, long look at these familiar scenes. The extra thing should be “powerful and impossible to ignore, but not something that would make people panic. … Eventually I decided it should be a huge animal.”
In 2012 Liu Di continued the series by playing with the juxtaposition between disproportional human nudes and natural surroundings, while in 2013 he started working on third series of “Animal Regulations”.
Using Photoshop, he reproportioned animals and men and inserted them at gigantic scale into shabby urban settings. By shoehorning these bottom-heavy beasts and naked men into back streets, construction sites and tenement courtyards, he investigate the friction between the natural world and urban residents, between the material world and the intellect, between obedience to and violation of the laws of nature.
Images courtesy of Liu Di
Discover: www.whiterabbitcollection.org
