After dropping out of art school and dabbling in oil painting, Li decided to focus on action art because, as he puts it, only it “offers a chance to experience an action’s message through one’s own body.” Li threw himself (literally) into this medium of expression, staging stunts in which he captures on film exhilarating moments of apparently extreme danger.
Li uses a mixture of props, wires, cleverly positioned cameras and good old fashioned acrobatics to achieve the astounding effects in his photographs. However, quite aside from the immediate ‘Wow!’ factor, his art also makes some penetrating statements about the difficulties, particularly lack of security, of living in the modern age.
