Liang Shuo was born in 1976 in Jinxian, which is in China’s northern Tianjin province. He studied sculpture at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, graduating in 2000. He then taught sculpture for two years at Tsinghua University in Beijing, and afterwards took a residency at the Royal Institute in Amsterdam. That led to an artist residency at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague. In 2009, he joined the Department of Sculpture at CAFA. Liang currently lives and works in Beijing and is represented by Beijing Commune.
Liang Shuo makes use of a variety of materials including found objects, stones, plastic and mud. He has constructed a unique aesthetic system termed zha, meaning ‘residues’, ‘dregs’, ‘sediment’. He explores the relationship between objects without preconception, assembling found objects – but avoiding any alteration of their existing structures or the creation of new works.
He participated in the 3rd Shanghai Biennale (2000), the Busan Biennale (2004) and the 9th Shanghai Biennale Reactivation (2012). He has had many solo exhibitions in China, and his works have been displayed internationally. His first solo exhibition in Europe was in 2017 at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden in Germany. Liang used materials found on-site, and organised them according to a set of rules based on traditional Chinese ink-wash painting. In March 2019, Beijing Commune exhibited Scenery, the artist’s second solo exhibition.
Liang’s recent works have been exhibited at National Museum of China, Beijing; Today Art Museum, Power Station of Art, Shanghai; Guangdong Times Museum, Guangdong; National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul; National Museum of Singapore; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco; Groninger Museum, Groningen; Museum Het Domein, Sittard; Museum Beelden aan Zee, The Hague; The Gerrit Rietveld Academie, Amsterdam; KAdE Art Centre, Amersfoort, the Netherlands; Espai d'Art Contemporani in Castello, Spain; Kunstnernes Hus Art Museum, Oslo; and Museo Pietro Canonica, Rome.