Hongrui Henry Liu was born in 2000 in Shenzhen, Guangdong, and moved to Hong Kong at the age of seven. He received his BA in Fine Art from Central Saint Martins, and subsequently completed postgraduate studies at the Royal College of Art and The Courtauld Institute of Art, moving across the fields of contemporary art practice, art history, and painting. His practice is grounded in constructing “relations between differences,” developing an critical approach through which connections emerge within the staging of difference, making cross-cultural, cross-historical, and intersubjective understanding possible.
Each work begins from his reflexive reconstruction of everyday life and memory. Through the processes of visual translation, he continually reshapes memories and experiences spanning London and Hong Kong, gradually attenuating—and at times partially dissolving—their subjectivity. The concepts of “home” and “belonging” are thus displaced from its traditional definition, transformed into structures, forms, environments, and atmospheres, giving rise to a future-oriented visual space charged with potential for new narratives and temporalities. Themes of individual alienation and urban fragmentation surface as he reflects on both the self and the contemporary condition; difference and similarity are articulated through monumental, accumulated forms, dissonant structures, and spatial tensions. The “urban environment” in his work refers not only to the physical city, but also to a shared psychological space shaped by migration, trans-cultural mobility, instability, and the relentless rhythm of metropolitan life. The emotional terrain he engages—alienation, desire, and the need to be understood—reflects both individual subjectivity and a broader collective condition. His paintings register the hybridity and fluidity of modern subjectivity, establishing a visual space in which differences may appear without full reconciliation; commonality here arises not from homogeneity, but from a shared vulnerability within an ongoing process of becoming.
group exhibitions
spndrft @ Artsect Gallery, London (2021)
I Spoke to Them @ Safehouse 1, London (2021)
Dialogue with Aeolus (Film Screening) @ International Curators Forum, Diaspora Pavilion 2, London, (2022)
Art Composition 藝構, Bravo Arts, Shenzhen, China (2023)
Ephmeral Radicals, Greatorex Street, London, UK. 2024
XV Florence Biennale, Florence, Italy, 2025
Stratum Gallery @ The Other House South Kensington, London, UK, 2025
Hyper-Urban, Mall Galleries, London, UK. 2025
Solo Exhibitions
In Drift, Hive Centre For Contemporary Arts, Hive Becoming, Shanghai, China, 2026
Institutional Collections
X Museum, Beijing, China
UNO Art Space, Guangzhou, China
White Rabbit Collection, Sydney, Australia