ANTENNA SPACE is delighted to present “Lake Washington”, the first solo exhibition of Beijing-based artist LIU Ding in Shanghai. This exhibition presents his most current series of works based on the subject matter that he has been working on and doing research about during the last two years. This project evolves around the working tradition and artistic consciousness of “social realism”, exploring the issue of artistic practice through his own form of artistic practice, and bringing the organizational principle and logic shaping and constraining artistic practices to the foreground. In LIU Ding’s practice, the organizational method and ideology of art history, and the experience, habit and consciousness that they have imposed on us remain the core of his investigation. His works question them repeatedly and wish to describe their inner nature again and again. He is not satisfied with the existing foundation for our practice. His sense of frustration does not end with taking a critical position as an outsider. He sees himself as part of the structure that he is questioning and exposes himself together with the basis that he critiques in his work with a self-descriptive approach. He is ready to open himself to every bit of challenge and danger that comes along such self-exposure.