Lian Liu

Studio Art and Computer Science major

I am a multidisciplinary visual artist working across painting, photography, sound, video, and technology. My practice is inherently time-based, drawing inspiration from dappled light, shifting shadows, and other ordinary phenomena. Quiet observations of my surroundings become gateways to the sublime. I explore the complexity of meaning through manipulated photographs, 3D models, and interventions with my writings. My work speaks to a layered yet poetic experience of the world through abstraction. I consider my practice a form of meditation—a way of reconciling with personal history and collective pain.

Left with the Afterimage

oil paint and photocopy transfer on panel, handbound artist books with archival inkjet and risograph prints

Jewett Gallery, Jewett Sculpture Court

horizontal abstract-seeming painting with lime green shading to pink background, overlaid with splotches of white and blue that could be dappled light

In this series, Left with the Afterimage, I attempt to trace the imprints of what once was. It seeks lingering impressions that remain after something becomes invisible, much like the afterimage we see after closing our eyes. In this work, shifting light and shadow become portals to personal memory and history. The series began with a handbound book of photographs, capturing the changing light across seasons in the same arboretum. I reflect on the arboretum's history, which once held a glacier. From photos, I translate their visual clues into patterns and intersections of colors. Dappled light becomes paintings of fluid shapes and rich colors of pink, green, and blue. The visual clues abstracted from photographs become the afterimage I manipulate. The project develops with complexity as I paint over family photographs, concealing and revealing history in the making of the painting. In translating visual imagery through various processes, I explore the complexities and nuances of representing what once existed.

two vertical paintings on a white wall, both showing soft blotches resembling close-up blurry photographic background light; the left is darker with blotches in green and blue; the right is brighter with blotches in green and orange

small artist's book open on a white shelf, showing a full page spread of translucent blue acrylic blocks lying in sunlight grass

hands flipping through an artist's book with photographs of acrylic blocks lying on a forest floor

hands lifting a long horizontal riso print of trees rising from a yellow ground out of a narrow pocket in a long horizontal handmade artist's book

RISO print in blue, orange, yellow with 5 panels showing various things about ginkgo leaves, pinned to a white wall

close up on the corner of a painting on panel, green to pink gradient background with a white kidney-shaped splotch extended over the corner

hands holding pages on a long horizontal artist's book; both pages of the visible spread have a yellow to blue gradient background and small amounts of blue text in the center of each page

to see more work by Lian: lian.cargo.site and @lian_illu

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