Xu Qu was born in 1978 in Suzhou, in the southern coastal province of Jiangsu. He graduated with an MFA in Fine Arts and Film from Nanjing Art Institute in 2002. He then studied under Professor John Armleder and Birgit Hein at the Braunschweig University of Art, Germany, before joining a postgraduate programme under Professor John Armleder. He lives and works in Beijing.
Xu Qu has explored a wide range of media – video, painting, sculpture and installation – to ask questions about global power relations. In Currency Wars, curated by Jérôme Sans at the Almine Rech Gallery in Brussels (2015), he enlarged details of banknotes to create abstractions that became defamiliarised to the point of absurdity – but were at the same time colourful and beautiful. In other words, he noted then magnified the aesthetic element that, for anti-forgery reasons, is literally imprinted on the world’s money supply.
Other solo exhibitions include Hunting, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing (2015). Selected group exhibitions include: The World III in the Third World, curated by Bao Dong at Tang Contemporary Art, Bangkok (2014); Cosmos – Limited and limitless, existence and co-existence, curated by Li Zhenhua at the Shanghai 21st Century Minsheng Art Museum (2014); Digging a hole in China, curated by Lau Venus, at the Contemporary Art Terminal, Shenzhen; (2016); Bentu, des artistes chinois dans la turbulence des mutations at the Fondation Louis Vuitton, Paris (2016); ZHONGGUO 2185, Sadie Coles HQ, London (2017); Abstraction(s), Song Art Museum, Beijing (2019).