BIO

Aaron Li-Hill is a Canadian visual artist currently based between London and New York, who employs painting, illustration, stenciling, and sculptural elements within his art. With a background in graffiti and mural painting and a degree in Fine Arts, his works range from smaller multiples to enormous murals that explore industrialization, scientific breakthrough, “man versus nature” and information saturation. To create these complex images, Li-Hill draws from his mixed Chinese American cultural background and blurs the lines between disparate methodologies and approaches such as graffiti, classical figurative painting, graphic design, sculpture, action painting and found object assemblage. Li-Hill possesses a BFA from OCADU and has worked and shown in cities such as Melbourne, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Berlin and Hong Kong. He has also had works displayed in major institutions such as the National Gallery of Victoria, The Art Gallery of Ontario, the Long Beach Museum of Art, Urban Nation Museum of Contemporary Art Berlin, the Portsmouth Museum of Art in New Hampshire and the CCCC museum in Valencia.

Statement

Li-Hill’s work attempts to decipher the complexities of the rapid development in our modern age. Through the “western” gaze Li-Hill points to the devastating effects of capitalist culture on the individual psyche, his work serves as a template for the ramifications felt on a global scale. The work mirrors the perception of the westerner attempting to comprehend, disentangle and redress. Born out of suppression, it becomes a manifestation portraying the skewed image of the imprint our culture has globally. To create these complex images Li-Hill blurs the lines between the imposed disciplines of the art world such as graffiti, graphic design, painting and drawing to disrupt the concepts of what is considered high and low-brow art. Through the storm of imagery and density, there is also a beauty that surfaces from this fragile balance. Inspired by the precariousness of the work on the street, ephemerality is injected into the core of the work, furthering its unsettling nature.

photo credit: Tadao Cern