Li Gang’s practice creates a meticulous and poetic balance between materiality and conceptuality. His works, from his installations to his sculptures, and on to his paintings, are always marked by a substantive materiality, which the artist defines as the most important “language” in his art. But his practice is not so much a discussion of materiality as it is playing with the definition of materiality itself. Li’s work zeroes in on the relationship between materiality and the essence of things; the transformation and stacking of different materials; finding new forms of conveyance of materiality beyond common-sense, universal, or specific means of conveyance. The expression being pondered in his practice is not mere research of aesthetic form, texture and materials, but a consideration of social composition and cultural constructs. His environment and reality, from personal to societal, are represented with humorous manipulation in his sculptures and paintings. His work also speaks to memory. The social criticism his artworks aim to reflect lands not on the direct story behind them, but on a form of collective anamnesis experienced by individuals in resistance to the violence of an era. Such anamnesis cannot be achieved through narrative alone—it is naturally revealed in the contradictory relationships between matter, material, shape, and form.