The Genesis Facade Commission: Liu Wei brings four monumental sculptures to the exterior of The Metropolitan Museum of Art on Fifth Avenue. Titled Speculation, the site-specific project marks Liu Wei’s first major US project and the seventh commission in The Met’s contemporary facade series. The works remain on view through June 8, 2027, free with Museum admission.
Part of The Met’s ongoing contemporary programme, the commission invites artists to create new works in dialogue with the Museum’s architecture, collection and audiences. Previous commissions have featured Wangechi Mutu, Hew Locke, Carol Bove, Nairy Baghramian, Lee Bul and Jeffrey Gibson.
Fragments, hands and shifting realities
Drawing on the urban environment, historical imagery and the human body, Liu Wei combines recognisable fragments with unexpected forms. Across the four sculptures, the human hand emerges as a recurring motif, carrying cultural, art-historical and bodily associations while shifting between the familiar and the fantastical.
The works reflect Liu’s interest in rupture and repair, as well as the contradictions born from rapid social change. Through scale, material and architectural context, the Beijing-based artist creates sculptures that feel monumental yet raw, with an intimacy that invites closer attention.
A practice shaped by a changing world
Since the late 1990s, Liu Wei has worked across photography, painting, video, sculpture and installation. Part of a generation of Chinese artists who developed new approaches to conceptual art, he has consistently blurred the boundaries between abstraction, figuration and the readymade.
His practice draws on the experience of globalisation and the profound economic, political and social changes that have reshaped contemporary China. Urban fragments, historical references and bodily forms recur throughout his work, reassembled into environments that consider conflict, change and the unstable relationship between people and their surroundings.
Speculation marks Liu’s first major US project, following solo exhibitions at museums in Beijing, Shanghai, Seoul and Cleveland. The commission continues The Met’s facade series and its engagement with contemporary art.
Photography by HYLA SKOPITZ
Courtesy of THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART
