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LIU Wen Hao, born in 1995 in Taipei, is currently pursuing his master's degree in Fine Arts at the Taipei National University of the Arts. This solo exhibition features LIU's recent new works from 2023 to 2024. He conveys his artistic insights and distinctive visual expression through 44 pieces, including the Plotted Plants, Connect the Dots, and Plaster Cast series.
LIU shared that his creative journey began during his studies in the Fine Arts Department at Tunghai University in Taichung. Eleven years after his college days, his creative direction has been shaped by the ailments and personal insights he encountered since childhood. LIU has lived with the challenges of Tourette syndrome, which causes involuntary hand tremors, and atopic dermatitis, which leads to itchy red bumps—difficult memories that have marked his life growing up. In his artistic practice, he alternates the use of acrylic and lacquer spray paints, employing techniques such as scraping with a scraper and sanding with water sandpaper. This creates dynamic, wild lines that reveal intricate, scab-like textures that echo his experiences with physical pain.
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Connect the Dots
To capture the precise shapes of plants, LIU Wen Hao drew inspiration from a childhood drawing exercise: the connect-the-dots game, where lines link a series of points to outline the form of an object.
This new series, recently developed by LIU, begins with projecting an image of a plant onto the canvas and marking key turning points of their shapes with dots. He then connects these dots using spray paint. Through techniques such as layering undercoats, spraying, sanding, and iterative refinements, he transforms these forms into plant images that blend the figurative with the abstract.
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Potted Plants
LIU Wen Hao's Artist's Statement
In 2022, I started studying potted plants and came to see them as a form of life constrained into an unnatural state. They represent engineered and meticulously crafted slices of natural scenery. By shrinking trees, stones, and water into a small pot, it’s as if powerful magic is used to confine and resculpt nature. This magic, much like the use of wires to control the growth patterns of bonsai, embodies a framework shaped by human intervention. I have always felt that bonsai mirrors the human experience, perpetually molded to conform to societal ideals. This inspired me to explore potted plants as a concept in my art, as it symbolizes creativity forged within the bounds of constraint.
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劉文豪 LIU Wen Hao
天使蔓綠絨 Tree Philodendron, 2024壓克力顏料、噴漆／畫布 Acrylic and spray paint on canvas
256 x 144 cmSold -
Installation views
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Plaster Cast
In 2024, LIU Wen Hao began to delve even deeper into the theme of "limitations". He reflected on the restrictions he encountered at various stages of his education, from the strict requirements for precise character strokes in elementary school workbooks to the mastery of plaster cast forms in high school art classes. For him, these past experiences were fraught with challenges. To explore the essence of these limitations, he chose the precise line alignment of the plaster cast as his starting point, embarking on a series of creative experiments.
In the initial stage of creation, he projected the outline of the plaster cast onto the canvas and then cut the canvas into a shape that matched the cast's contour. He stretched the canvas over a wooden frame and began layering paint, gradually building up the form. Next, he employed the grid method, dividing both the photograph of the plaster cast and the canvas into corresponding grids, striving to replicate the proportions with precision. Yet the process did not go as smoothly as anticipated. Slight discrepancies arose during projection sketching and cutting. When the canvas was stretched over the wooden frame, its shape shifted further, and the gradual buildup of paint layers caused the outlines to expand, making the distortion even more pronounced. Faced with these uncontrollable challenges, he had to make repeated adjustments to accurately realign the distorted outlines.
Through iterative revisions, the outline of the plaster cast gradually lost its original precision, transforming into a form that teetered between order and chaos. Ultimately, the process led to an unexpected result—a state of "perfect chaos". LIU realized that the interplay between restraint and chaos in the creative process might just hold the answer he has been seeking.
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劉文豪 LIU Wen Hao石膏像 美第奇-正臉 Plaster Cast of Medici - Front View, 2024壓克力顏料、噴漆／畫布裱於不規則木板 Acrylic and spray paint on canvas mounted on irregular wooden board120 x 80 cm
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劉文豪 LIU Wen Hao石膏像 手 I Plaster Cast of Hand I, 2024壓克力顏料、噴漆／畫布裱於不規則木板 Acrylic and spray paint on canvas mounted on irregular wooden board117 x 76 cmSold
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As we are about to ring in the New Year of 2025, ESLITE GALLERY is delighted to present the debut solo exhibition of rising Taiwanese artist LIU Wen Hao. The exhibition features his latest works from the past two years, including his most representative Potted Plants series, where bonsai plants burst forth like fireworks on the canvas, symbolizing a yearning to break free from imposed constraints and stretch outward in pursuit of the freedom to flourish...
LIU Wen Hao Solo Exhibition
Opening: December 21, 2024 (Sat.)丨3-5 pm
Date: December 21, 2024 — January 25, 2025
Address: ESLITE GALLERY∣B1, No. 88, Yanchang Rd., Xinyi Dist., Taipei City 110055, Taiwan (eslite spectrum Songyan Store)
Opening Hours: 11am-7pm, Tuesday – Saturday (closed on Sunday and Monday)
