Leo Gallery is thrilled to announce Liu Ying's inaugural solo exhibition in mainland China, titled Light Radiates in Darkness, on view from March 9 to March 31, 2024. This exhibition showcases the artist's latest creations from the past year.
The characters "玄" (Xuan) and "冥" (Ming), both meaning black, when combined, allude to the Taoist concept of "nothingness," often described as the "realm of mystery." However, Liu Ying's paintings transcend the portrayal of mere darkness; they illuminate the vibrant energy thriving within it. "The darker the surroundings, the more perceptible the light, even if it's faint." Through vigorous and commanding abstract strokes, the artist leads the observer into the domain of "light" within the enigma.
Since her solo debut in 2020, Liu Ying has continued to explore the expressive potential of abstract gesture. The artist considers her canvases of bold, riveting impasto as “transposition” of vital energies distilled from daily life—from human behaviour and social interactions to natural phenomena such as a sunrise, a flowing river, or a thunderstorm. Liu’s paintings in fact exude a reverence for life that will resonate across cultures and invite diverse interpretations—the vibrant ruptures on her canvases just as easily recall the Chinese creation myth of Pangu separating sky and earth from primordial chaos, as they appear to narrate the turbulent facets of human emotion.
“When I am painting, I am always working to the absolute limits of my strength. If my energetic force in that moment is insufficient to the task I have set myself, or if my control of the process is not good enough, then I have no choice but to destroy the painting and start all over again.” Liu’s bravado brushwork ultimately seeks visual forms for expressing intangible energies, emotions, and experiences. Her artistic determination is foremost intuitive rather than formalist. Nonetheless, it is intuition with a method. Classically trained at the China Academy of Art, Liu is well-versed in the techniques of realist painting. Even though the kind of abstraction she has now developed appears spontaneous, firm technical control shines through in her balancing of colours, layers, and the weight and breadth of brushstrokes that cohere different visual elements into a total image. Her original training in sculpture also translates in her use of impasto, wherein oil colours are often aggregated into wrought, undulating, three-dimensional outgrowths that further accentuate the magnitude of energies that she transposes onto her canvases.
As with any kind of gestural abstraction, the painting is also a record of the creative process. Contemplating Liu’s canvases, we are drawn by their sinuous paint streaks, sharp bends of colour, and complexity of layers to imagine the artist’s decisions and journey. As we begin to make connections between different brushstrokes, sequence the layering of colours, the paintings come to life as greater than a sum of its gestures. They become cathartic microcosms of confrontation and dilemma, of compromise and resolution that mirror our patterns of energetic exchange in everyday life.
Excerpted from “Sublime Gestures - New Works by Liu Ying” written by Joyce Hei-ting Wong.
