Li Qunli was born in Guangzhou, China in 1961. He moved to Vancouver, Canada in 1985 and studied at Emily Carr University of Art and Design until graduating in 1989. He currently lives and works in Shanghai and Beijing.
Li Qunli persistently observes the complicated world with his camera lens and filters out the trivial details of life with his freehand brushwork, eventually forming his unique series of paintings - Impersonal Encounters. He summed up the theme of his early artworks as "if one thing matters, everything matters". In Li Qunli's unique daily perspective, there are ambiguous human bodies with their faces hidden, empty and deserted industrial landscapes, and solemn statues of ordinary things...He scattered his keen antennae into different "representations" and "abstracted" them into another life form that seemed to be able to enter "eternity" on canvas.
The source of inspirations of Li Qunli's recent artworks is pictures on the internet. With a more relaxed brushwork, the original image was poetically transformed into a pure painting existence by Li Qunli.