“Metal, props, and fantasy blur until the room feels like a stage waiting for its next command.”
The Weight of Play
Xiaozhou Liao builds worlds that sit somewhere between a rehearsal room and a battlefield, with recent exhibitions at Gene Gallery Shanghai, Biesenbach Galerie Cologne, BBK Kunstforum DĂĽsseldorf, and Klub 300 Neun in Cologne situating this work in a growing international context.
Xiaozhou Liao's exhibition on view at Gene Gallery
His sculptures arrive like stage props that grew a conscience, objects that have stepped out of performance and chosen to hold their ground.
The viewer feels it the moment they enter the room. Color, steel, animal forms and industrial shine gather into scenes that read as humorous and sharp at once.
Xiaozhou Liao: ON THE LET: Der Ritter (2023), aluminum plate with galvanized and stainless steel tubing, cut iron, OSB, gear motor, metal connectors and rail rollers, 180 Ă— 150 Ă— 80 cm. ON THE RIGHT: Auf 1969 (2024), aluminum plate with galvanized and stainless steel tubing, cut iron, OSB, reciprocating motor, UV painted components and hollow wheel, 50 Ă— 50 Ă— 110 cm. Images courtesy the artist.
The tone stays playful while the question beneath it remains serious. What does spectacle hide and who controls it.
Between Theatre and the Everyday
Liao grew up inside a theatre troupe, a background that still governs how he understands space.
He does not build sculpture in the traditional sense, he builds scenes, gestures, and choreographies.
A rooster becomes a protagonist, a slide becomes a warning. Horses appear like exhausted myths, staged on platforms that feel closer to industrial traps than pedestals.
Each work carries its own timing. You step in and the object seems to wait for your next move.
Neoliberal Fantasy, Rebuilt by Hand
Much of Liao’s work turns ideology into something physical. Consumer gloss sits beside medieval motifs.
Shiny surfaces and mechanical parts echo the promises of efficiency and speed. A knight races a go-kart. A horse collapses under arrows. A tower made of soft modules hints at comfort and control.
These contradictions outline how neoliberal stories are built. Seductive on the outside, rigid underneath.
Liao does not moralize. He lets the humor of the props reveal the system for him.
Xiaozhou Liao: Wind Vane, 2025. SOLO EXHIBITION, THE GALE IN THE ARMOR. COPYRIGHT © 2025 GENE GALLERY. Image courtesy the artist
Material as Script
The materials operate like actors. Metal reflects and distorts. Resin catches the light in ways that feel both artificial and tender. Scaffolding shapes the room with a sense of incomplete construction, like a scene still rehearsing itself.
Everything appears ready to activate. You can sense the theatre training in how he balances weight and tension, light and risk.
If you stepped in too close something might shift. Or you might be the one who shifts.
A Growing Visual Language
As he works between Chengdu, Shanghai, and DĂĽsseldorf, Liao has developed a vocabulary that feels unmistakably his.
He borrows from playgrounds, prop rooms, medieval sets, and digital interfaces.
Xiaozhou Liao. Video courtesy the artist
Time periods collide, and the border between entertainment and critique dissolves. His installations refuse a final message, they hover, always in motion, like performances that will not end.
What remains is the question they leave open: "What am I really looking at?"
Why This Work Matters
Liao’s work matters because it exposes how power performs through space.
His installations reveal quiet mechanisms behind spectacle, the ways ideology settles into metal, play, humor, and objects that appear harmless at first.
Xiaozhou Liao: Awards Exhibition “Participating in Uncertainty” (2025), resin 3D printing with cold rolled iron, aluminum tubing, automotive camber arm, reciprocating motor, aluminum casing, water, and hardware. Shown at Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, Chongqing. Image courtesy the artist.
Xiaozhou Liao in his studio, working with sculptural components and metal forms. Image courtesy the artist.
The sculptures carry a tension that makes you pause, then look again. They turn abstraction into something physical, a reminder that contemporary life is built on structures we rarely notice.
In a world driven by surface and speed, Liao offers a language that slows the gaze and sharpens perception, and that is why his work stays with you long after the room is empty.
Xiaozhou Liao testing kinetic rooster sculptures in his studio workspace. Images courtesy the artist.
About Xiaozhou Liao
Born in 1995 in Chengdu, Liao studied Stage Design at the Central Academy of Drama before continuing at the Academy of Fine Arts in DĂĽsseldorf with Alexandra Bircken.
His practice spans installation, sculpture, and theatre design, grounded in textual deconstruction and a focus on how contemporary space is shaped by political and ideological forces.
His recent solo exhibition “The Gale in the Armor” opened at Gene Gallery Shanghai, alongside previous presentations at Biesenbach Galerie in Cologne, BBK Kunstforum Düsseldorf, Klub 300 Neun, Magma Maria in Offenbach, and other earlier exhibitions in China and Germany.
His awards include the Tomorrow Sculpture Awards at Sichuan Fine Arts Institute and earlier recognitions from institutions in China and Europe. His motto remains simple and sharp. Suffering is the great school.
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