Featured Artist of The Week: Tsuki Liang!
"I’m an emerging artist who mainly focuses on oil painting and graphite drawing. My expressions towards life is the fundamental idea behind all my works. Whether is my despair wailing to the meaningless of life, or questioning the way of living. Life itself is the thing I obsessed the most. I was strongly influenced by Nietzsche and a range of writers, such as Camus, Dostoyevsky…who explored nihilism and the absurdity of life. I have to look for an answer in order to be down to earth.
For me, art is the language of my show. It allows me to escape from the limitation of words we use in daily life. Both consciousness and unconsciousness within me are unity on my canvas. They speak for themselves with elements, colour and each brush strokes. I intend to express these sentimental and sensitive ideas through detailed and settled texture. The colour use or the choice of object is strongly based on the topic itself. My work sometimes comes together with poetry or dialogue style of writing. They can either be my reflections of the unconsciousness elements that convey through the painting, or the original inspirations in my mind.
I think this is the core of my art. I want to express my view towards life, whether it's understandable or making nonsense. I want to be an observer of life and I am an entertainer for myself."
Selected artwork:
Artworks in order:
Night, 2020, 70cm x 100cm, Oil on Canvas
Existence, 2020, 50cm x 120cm each, Oil on Canvas
Home, 2020, 45.7cm x 35.6cm, Oil on Canvas board
Standing in the empty field.
Surrounded by the dying straw.
I look at the stormy sky,
I guess I’m trapped.
“There are ways,” you said.
Up to the sky.
Down beneath the fence.
I look at the stormy sky,
I think I’m trapped.
You blame me for ignoring the ways,
but do I really have a choice?
I don’t have wings to fly towards the sky.
I can’t trick myself to pass through the fence.
I look at the stormy sky,
I won’t cover my eyes.
Up to the unknown.
Down beneath the covering.
There are ways.
I look at the stormy sky.
Trapped.
如烟 (Like smoke), 2021, Graphite on paper, 30 x 40cm
Corner, 2021, Oil on canvas, 45.7 x 61cm each
Emotions that I feel are real, but I can’t describe them with words properly.
Thoughts that I understand are deep, but I’m unable to describe them with words completely.
Things work in their own way, the same as me: my mind, my impulse, my instinct……
I think I’m a bit tired.
I want to lie on the floor like I have dead already.
I want to blend into the light with the rest of everything.
Corner, corner.
You are ordinary just like me.
Corner, corner.
You are my marvellous Muse.
不可言, 不可说 (Ineffable)。
Let me turn off the light.
And shh.
All the works are developed at different stages during the pandemic. As an international student who wasn't able to go home, I spent almost two years alone in my room. I think a lot: from the struggle and the feeling of being trapped at the beginning (“Night”), to escaping from reality in my imagination (“Home”& “Existence”). At the end of two years, I no longer struggled, but reached a status of living at this moment. I try to accept any thought, any thing… that is arising in this second and appreciate their existence (“Corner”).
The works I've been developed these two years are strongly related to the struggles of people in today's society. Whether is due to the pandemic or the feeling of lost and anxious in today's rapid developed world. Although the work may stirring up some sad or depressed memories from audience, it also shows that none of us is facing these emotions alone. To some extent, it comforts people in the way that we are not alone, there are people struggles but keep going with us in the same way.
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