School of Fine Art / Master of Fine Art / Yuchen Liu / Illusion without Illusion

Illusion without Illusion

In my practice, painting is a reversible and repeatable process, while life is an irreversible journey. Therefore, I tend to start from the internal game of painting, connecting painting practice with life developmemt, in order to achieve inward introspection. As a creator with a distant knowledge background from visual art, facing the layered mismatch between individual experience composed almost of “rational knowledge” and the “perception” system of painting, “sublation” naturally becomes a necessary and urgent issue.  At the same time, two seemingly unrelated life experiences also share a common connection. Just as the reason I chose paper pulp as the textual material, textbooks and draft papers can become inseparable parts of the artwork after being torn, soaked, and reshaped, blending with different elements representing sensibility and rationality in the picture, to create randomness and certainty from different perspectives, and showing exploration and reconstruction when facing spiritual confusion. It can be said that this project starts with my own reflection as the inspiration, and is connected by the abandonment, stacking, and reconstruction of the colors and textures of painting itself, demonstrating the irretrievability and unpredictability of life development, as well as the important significance of self-acceptance in this process.

Journey to the West 80cm x 80cm Oil on canvas, paper pulp 2023
Wild Geometry 80cm x 80cm Oil on canvas, paper pulp 2023
Disco Balls 80cm x 80cm Oil on canvas, paper pulp 2023
Flexing Apparatus 80cm x 80cm Oil on canvas, paper pulp 2023