Liu Wei came to prominence in the early 90s as one of the main proponents of the Cynical Realist style. This Untitled (Lot 34) is one of a rare series of ink-on-paper works Liu created between 1986-90, in which he playfully adopts the aesthetic trappings of the literati to portray a contemporary sense of displacement and unease.

In Untitled (Lot 34), Liu Wei pays close attention to the interplay of text and image. Liu fuses pictorial elements of Chinese painting, including the white negative space and the red signet, into his works to draw an analogue of the past to comment on the present. The textural richness in the modeling of the figure and the expressionistic tone echo Liu's groundbreaking Cynical Realist works in oil of this same period, such as The New Generation. The lively calligraphic inscription and the fantastical seals enhance the nuanced richness of the work.