Liu Wei’s Met Facade Comission Reflects Our Moment
On view through next June, Liu's sculpture series “Speculation” (2026) contemplates the contradictory elements of collapse and civic transformation.
Ten years after his last solo show in the city, Beijing-based artist Liu Wei returns to New York with brand-new works for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Genesis Facade Commission. On view through next June, Liu's Speculation (2026) reflects on the contradictory elements of collapse and civic transformation.
Flanking both sides of The Met's main entrance, Liu's sculptures feature metal and fiberglass composite forms melding abstracted archaeological and architectural references. Reflective surfaces and modernist spheres are nestled in or balanced on vertical masses of biomorphic shapes that appear flimsily bound together with nails, cords, ropes, and metal bars.
Enormous hands are incorporated at the base of the two primary sculptures of Speculation, appearing as distorted mudras (symbolic gestures for energy redirection in Hinduism and Buddhism) while emphasizing humanity's role in making the imagined tangible.
On the left-hand sculpture, Liu includes a stitched bovine rawhide that's tightly contoured along one of the abstracted shapes, while a matte black form resembling a fireplace mantle's decorative wooden scroll is central to the work on the right. Various industrial and interior finishes are used across the sculptures, simultaneously contrasting with and complementing The Met's limestone façade and monumental Corinthian columns.
“In Speculation, Liu Wei asks us to confront our culture’s relentless processes of making and becoming,” said Lesley Ma, the Department of Modern and Contemporary Art's curator of Asian art, who tapped Liu for the commission, in a press statement.
Liu, who bore witness to the rapid urbanization and globalization of China from 1978 onwards, often references the destabilizing nature and growing pains of major transformations in his work. The artist is recognized among a generation of provocative Chinese contemporary creators who used irony, cynicism, and skepticism in their critique of the nation's frenetic social, economic, and technological evolutions, often tapping into themes of corruption, consumerism, and authority.
Looking at Liu's sculptures from The Met's iconic steps, 23-year-old Jersey resident Shivani Jayant and her 25-year-old cousin Raja, visiting NYC from New Delhi, spoke to Hyperallergic about the work yesterday evening, September 17. Raja said that the bronze and black coloration on one of the sculptures made him think of Ancient Egypt and that he saw an abstracted form of Ganesha in the rightmost sculpture, while Jayant added that the pieces are “very striking” against The Met's historic architecture.
“It's very New York, with these metal finishes in combination with the historic building,” she said.
“The ropes signify something being held together, like you're molding something,” Raja said after taking a closer look. “It's incomplete, it's still being worked on. In that sense it connotes industrialization because that's a process that will never be completed.”
As the seventh installment of The Met façade commission, Liu's Speculation will remain on view through June 7, 2027. Previous artists selected for the installation have included Jeffrey Gibson, Lee Bul, Hew Locke, and Wangechi Mutu.
The museum is having a busy start to the fall, breaking ground on its forthcoming modern and contemporary Tang Wing and announcing the acquisition of 38 paintings by Chinese ink painter Chang Dai-chien (Zhang Daqian) just this week.
