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Liu Bolin

Liu Bolin is a Chinese artist known for making the human body disappear. In his signature series "Hiding in the City" (also known as "Invisible Man"), Bolin paints himself to vanish into meticulously matched backdrops — from magazine stands to the Great Wall of China — using photography, sculpture, installation, and painting to probe the tension between individualism and collectivism in contemporary Chinese society.

Bolin's work addresses consumerism, rapid urban development, and the shifting role of the artist within a rapidly changing culture. He has exhibited internationally in New York, London, Paris, Beijing, Stockholm, and Hong Kong, and has performed at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Centre Pompidou, and Art Basel in Miami Beach.

His work is held in major collections including the Baltimore Museum of Art, Fotografiska, the M+ Sigg Collection, the Museo Enzo Ferrari, and the Red Mansion Foundation.

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Hiding in New York No. 2 - Kenny Scharf Mural
Liu Bolin
Hiding in New York No. 2, Kenny Scharf Mural, 2011

Price Upon Request

Archival pigment print face-mounted to Plexiglas46.5 x 59 in  (118.1 x 149.9 cm) For Hiding in the City No. 2 (Kenny Scharf Mural), Liu Bolin spent hours painting his body to vanish into one of New York's most recognizable walls — Kenny Scharf's Bowery mural, a dense explosion of cartoon figures and acid color. Look closely, and Bolin is somewhere inside it. The work belongs to Bolin's ongoing "Hiding in the City" series, begun in Beijing in 2005 after authorities demolished his studio. Since then, the series has taken him around the world, setting his camouflaged body against power stations, supermarket shelves, and now the walls of lower Manhattan. Every piece is painted by hand and captured in a single photograph, with no post-production. The choice of Scharf's mural is deliberate. Scharf's work is maximalist and exuberant — pure American pop abundance — while Bolin's method is its inverse: slow, quiet, and politically rooted. The two visual languages collide on one surface, and the figure dissolves into the seam between them. The setting adds its own weight: the Bowery was once the nerve center of New York's downtown art scene, a street that has absorbed generations of cultural change. Bolin has exhibited at Galerie Paris-Beijing and internationally, with a strong secondary-market presence at major auction houses. Works from "Hiding in the City" remain among his most sought-after.