Ticko LIU: And yet it moves
廖諱衡《我們環繞着什麼旋轉》
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Ticko LIU
And yet it moves 19 October – 16 November 2024 Gallery EXIT presents ‘And yet it moves’, a solo exhibition by local artist Ticko LIU, featuring 14 new works by the artist revolving around the ‘meaninglessness’ of the everyday. Sensing the immensity of the universe and the brevity of life, hence the insignificance and meaninglessness of human existence, the artist accumulates and organises these futile instances, capturing and transforming them into beautiful landscapes, i.e. art as a form of existence. In this body of work, LIU attempts to transform the various messages and meaningless events encountered during his daily transits into sentiments and images, to be transferred onto the canvas. During transit, a multitude of noises flash at him: The vehicles going back and forth on the opposite lane, street lights, distant stars and the moon; each projected light constitutes a message, evoking a separate world complete in itself, whispering to him. On the highway, headlights are like shooting stars, just as the Earth and other planets orbit the sun, and the solar system orbits the Milky Way. LIU gathers up these light fragments, ponders their meaning, as he searches for his own place among all things in the universe. The exhibition title refers to Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’, in which recounts the protagonist’s spiralling trajectory to and fro Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven. This is compared to the ways the individual revolves around everyday life, the vehicles on the highway revolving around Lion Rock, the Earth revolving around the Milky Way, rushing towards the centre of the galaxy: a mysterious end. ‘And yet it moves (Italian: E pur si muove)’ is a phrase attributed to Galileo in 1633 after being forced to recant his claims that the Earth moves around the Sun. The viewers must ask themselves: Is the consciousness in the centre, or orbiting? Greeting the viewers, the large painting ‘Revolve around its own axis’ is the centrepiece of a group of thirty small paintings opposite. Based on Ma On Shan, the lush mountain vegetation undulates against a bright orange background, and a ring of asteroids hovering above seems to be orbiting the mountain range. This motif of the orbiting spheres run through the exhibition, a symbol of the constant flow of time and unconscious growth. The thirty small paintings echo the daily noises surrounding the mountain. Through this imaginary landscape, the artist explores the relationship between entity and noise, the unity of society as a whole and the uniqueness of individuals. In ‘heaven, earth and man’, the artist quietly observes the wild flowers and grass along the highway, comprehending his existence in the gaps between heaven and earth as he gathers up the noises. The following section begins with ‘The sun and moon go round and round’ and ‘Kowloon Peak’, both distant views of mountains, with a central frame illustrating some narrative details. The former describes one’s helplessness driving home after work, while the sun also rises; the latter refers to romantic passion. ‘A few more minutes’ and ‘Five more minutes’ reveal the relativity of time: On the one hand, the lovers only want three more minutes to hold; on the other, workers take a smoke break and ask for the eternal five more minutes. All we ever want is more time. The exhibition concludes with three works: ‘Smoke break’, ‘Heat death of the universe’, and ‘Everything under the sun’, representing man, the universe and consciousness respectively. ‘Smoke break’ describes how we accumulate nonsensical time and in the process forming a collective understanding. The mountain symbolises the accumulation of time, the many arms reaching for the end beyond the green clouds. Heat death is a speculation of the ultimate fate of the universe based on the second law of thermodynamics; taking the end of the universe as the climax of the exhibition, the painting is placed on the other side of ‘Revolve around its own axis’. The hands reaching for the orange flame resemble the archaic humans making fire: The past, present and future are one. Consciousness is the outstretched arms of Buddha, silently observing everything in the eternal galaxy. Ticko LIU (Born in 1996) graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Visual Arts from the Hong Kong Baptist University in 2019. LIU’s surrealistic paintings are collages of his myriad ideas, inspirations, images and observations. His creations are inspired by various daily scenes, flora and fauna in the natural world, the cinema and moving images, his collection of toy models. All these are reimagined by the artist and rendered in bright colours and undulating lines on the canvas, presenting a fantasy space of the everyday that is nonetheless believable and relatable. Participated solo exhibitions include ‘Nonsensical ways of seeing’ (Square Street Gallery, Hong Kong, 2022), ‘The Mystery Boxes’ (PMQ, Hong Kong, 2021). Group exhibitions include ‘New Gaze’ (Gallery EXIT, Hong Kong, 2023), ‘Sweeping Vistas’ (JPS Gallery, Hong Kong, 2023), ‘Landscape Long March’ (a.m.space, Hong Kong, 2023), ‘FUTURE MEMORIES Utopia Dystopia Nature’ (City University of Hong Kong, 2021), ‘Pathfinder’ (Kunstquartier Bethanien, Berlin, 2020), ‘HKFOREWORD 2019’ (10 Chancery Lane Gallery, Hong Kong, 2019). The artist currently lives and works in Hong Kong. |