From childhood, our visual, auditory, and emotional awareness gained the ability to replicate the past, leaving behind image-like imprints of memories. These sensory cognitions form images that repeatedly reappear throughout our lives. Just as the poet T.S. Eliot said, the traces and symbolic values left by these memories represent emotions that our eyes cannot penetrate. Through poetic memories and a microscopic scale of perception, expressing those invisible yet existent imprints of life — this dual exploration of the past and present, time and eternity, consistently runs through Liu Wenqi's art practice.
Passing through an ancient building, encountering moments of light and shadow, or simply looking up at the blue sky, have all stirred the warmth hidden deep within Liu Wenqi's memories. The past and present overlap in such chance moments. In the "Sun in the Mist" series, Wenqi transforms instantaneous feelings into semi-obscure image layers, using techniques such as carving, coloring, and blending until forming ceramic plates, frozen in time. Those memories, feelings, and traces left by time in our lives seem to flow like a light stream through the crevices of thoughts, never ceasing to wander.
The river of memory is an ever-continuing process. Those imprints that fade with time, or even those awarenesses completely abandoned, may no longer be "retrieved" or "recognized." Perceptions of forgetting thus become the core subject of Wenqi's new series, "The Waltz of Time". She writes the memory of fish — "encounter, turn, forget" — in Braille on ceramic plates resembling memory shapes. Braille is an image that can be touched without needing to be seen, a reading of the soul. Perhaps, those lost memories stubbornly persist in the depths of the sea even after bidding farewell, existing eternally in the depths of the heart in a timeless form.
This solo exhibition will present six series of works created by Liu Wenqi from 2019 to 2024. Whether it's the early "Microscopic World" series or the newly created "The Waltz of Time", Liu Wenqi, with her transcendent self-awareness as a constant subject, captures intangible and precious entities in life through the unique medium of ceramics, attempting to incorporate those fleeting moments into the eternal river of memory as if they never truly dissipated.
Liu Wenqi (b. 1985) graduated from the Fashion Design program at ESMOD Paris in 2011 and transitioned from a fabric designer to an artist in 2018. She currently lives and works in Paris, France. Since childhood, our visual, auditory, and emotional consciousness has had the ability to replicate the past, leaving image-like imprints of memories. These sensory cognitions form images that repeatedly reappear throughout our lives. Through poetic memories and a microscopic scale of perception, Liu Wenqi expresses the life imprints that are invisible but truly existent. This dual exploration of the past and present, time and eternity, consistently runs through Liu Wenqi's art practice...