With Liu Yangwen's first-ever Hong Kong solo exhibition,
Forging the Wild, now on view at our Wyndham Street gallery, we invite you to join us in exploring his flower inspired works, particularly in this exhibition tour video with our art specialist Florence Tsai to dive into the inner world of Liu Yangwen and explore the unique shapes, angles and colours of his
#Genz aestheticism.
Floral still life has always been prominent in western painting, but Liu breaks through traditional perceptions and boundaries by reconstructing flowers with his own distinctive artistic language and form, claiming his position in a new wave of emerging Chinese contemporary painters.
Inspired by the flowers on the hill behind his studio, Liu continuously develops the flower bouquet he has in his mind, with repeatedly self-referential foldings, thinking about it from various angles, and focusing on it in different ways. In this process, the petals, stamens, and even the shape of the flower are gradually broken up, and within the structure of the painting, Liu arranges, composes, and expands the shapes, until the original three-dimensional flowers, folded and flattened, become more and more abstract. His use of cool colour tones with strong zigzag lines and bold brushstrokes presents a dynamism that we do not normally associate with flowers and the content of these flowers are not lost with the artist's deformation. Quite the opposite—the reconstruction of the lines actually gives the works more power. The initial, absolute quietude of the still life gives its place to a dynamic impulse, in which the boldness of youth and clear-headed design come together.
