New York, New York, January 21, 2026 — Liu Shiming Art Foundation is proud to present Archives, an exhibition of found photography sourced and curated by Thomas Sauvin and sculpture and sketches by Liu Shiming, which will be on view February 24th through May 17th. Seventeen works by Sauvin will be shown alongside eighteen works by Liu. Offering their dynamic perspectives on everyday life, the two artists’ attention to the ordinary and unseen seek to invite us to rediscover the beauty in simplicity as they transform fleeting moments into lasting testimonies of collective memory.
Put in conversation in Archives, Sauvin’s and Shiming’s work creates a space of circulation between mediums, where sculpted and photographed forms seem to respond to one another. Certain gestures and postures identified on film in Sauvin’s work appear to re-emerge in Liu’s, revealing the persistence of human behaviors, regardless of their context of capture or creation.
Liu Shiming, Beijing Lovers (1983), Ceramic, 8 ¼ x 3 ½ x 3 ⅜ in., Copyright The Artist, Courtesy of Liu Shiming Art Foundation.
This persistence is evident through Sauvin’s extensive project Beijing Silvermine. To create this work, he recovered and preserved negatives abandoned in a recycling factory in Beijing. Drawing from hundreds of thousands of images produced by amateur photographers between 1985 and 2005, Sauvin formed a unique corpus through which to observe the social, aesthetic, and cultural transformations of contemporary China. The handmade C-type silver prints give each image a singular presence. Printing functions as an act of re-creation: light, contrast, and paper texture bring forgotten moments back to life. Choosing photographs of street scenes, family portraits, celebrations, and everyday objects, Sauvin uncovers collective memory, revealing how a society in transition represents itself. His gesture is not merely that of an archivist. Sauvin proposes a sensitive and analytical perspective on vernacular culture, uncovering within the banal a documentary, emotional, and historical depth.
With a shared attention to the everyday, the works of Liu Shiming meet and extend Thomas Sauvin’s approach. The interests of Liu Shiming, who was born in China in 1926, lie in simple gestures and modest figures such as children, animals, and workers, all of which he focuses on for their expressive power. His sculptures bear witness to the ordinary gestures that run through daily life and the sensitivity and depth inherent in these scenes. As in Beijing Lovers, Liu uses his sculptural practice to prolong everyday moments of emotion, such as intimacy or love. His work can be viewed as an archive of his personal experiences with the people of China who he encountered during the course of his life.
The parallels between these two sensitive artists establishes a subtle tension between chance and intention, between documentary observation and artistic interpretation. Archives become a celebration of everyday life, a tribute to the traces we leave behind and to those we choose to preserve. The exhibition reaffirms the value of the ordinary and invites us to rediscover a beauty that unfolds in the simplicity of the real.
In 2026, the Foundation is celebrating the 100th anniversary of Liu Shiming’s birth. Additional exhibitions and celebrations to mark this anniversary year will be announced in the coming weeks.
About Thomas Sauvin
Since 2009, the French collector, archivist, and artist Thomas Sauvin has salvaged discarded negatives from a recycling plant on the edge of Beijing, negatives that were destined to destruction. His Beijing Silvermine archive, one of the largest archival projects in China, now encompasses over 850,000 anonymous photographs spanning the period from 1985 to 2005, thus allowing the reconstruction of a large part of the history of popular analogue photography in the country. This unceasingly evolving archive provides a visual platform for cross-cultural interactions, while impacting on our collective memory of the recent past. Thomas Sauvin won the prize for the Exhibition of the year at Lianzhou Photo Festival in 2013. His work has been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Photography of Chicago, the Beijing Central Academy of Fine Art, and the Guangdong Museum of Art. Over the past ten years, Thomas has published 15 photo books with the Archive of Modern Conflict (UK), Jiazazhi (CH), Skinnerboox (IT), The M Editions (FR), VOID (GREECE) as well as self-published artist books. His publications have entered the collections of TATE, the V&A, the Bibliotheque Nationale de France and the Pompidou Museum.
About Liu Shiming
Liu Shiming (1926-2010) is a revered Chinese artist whose works have had a distinct impact on the course of modern Chinese sculpture. Born in Tianjin, Liu attended the prestigious Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in Beijing where he was part of the first generation of sculptors trained by the People’s Republic of China to study both traditional Chinese art and French modernist principles. He continued to create and exhibit his sculpture in China until his death. Less than decade later, Liu’s sculpture began to be shown outside of China, appearing in public spaces and special exhibitions, notably at the Oculus in New York City and the Asian Cultural Center in Washington, DC. More recently, he has shown in university galleries and museums throughout the US and Canada, with exhibitions planned for Europe in the next year. His works are in the permanent collections of the American University in Cairo, Egypt; Czech National Museum in Prague; Georgia State University, Atlanta; Henan Art Museum, Zhengzhou, China; Macaulay Honors College in New York City; and the National Art Museum of China and the National Museum of Chinese History in Beijing.
About The Liu Shiming Art Foundation
Established in 2021, the Liu Shiming Art Foundation supports contemporary art worldwide while elevating and preserving the art of renowned Chinese artist Liu Shiming (1926-2010). Based in New York, the Foundation curates contemporary art exhibitions and provides scholarships, grants, and exchange opportunities to cultivate and grow a global arts discourse that recognizes common humanity, as Liu Shiming did as a teacher, through his art and life. lsmartfund.org.
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