Los Angeles–
Artist Jesse Liu’s first art exhibition Spring Fever , opened at the YiWei Gallery , Venice CA on March 4th , This Beijing-born artist of 1999 has crafted a collection of works that dazzled and mesmerized all the audiences at the opening ceremony !
This exhibition showcases a series of her captivating paintings, each with a unique narrative. By delving into the nuances of memory and others’ experiences, Liu strives to create pieces that evoke contemplation, empathy, and connection.
After graduating from the illustrious School of Visual Arts New York, Liu’s captivating paintings are a mixture of her own personal memories and emotions with an imaginary backdrop. Her motivation for each painting is her curiosity about memory; it records our feelings at certain points in time rather than exact events. By combining these two aspects into one image, she creates beautiful, emotive works that mesmerize viewers worldwide. Capturing reflections of the past, she paints a vibrant portrait that links these memories to reality. Through her works we can observe people lost in this alternate universe- some lingering in longing, others playing without restraint, and many either hiding from or searching for an unknown truth – all amidst feelings of discomfort or absolute joy.
Her artwork portrays Asian women in a range of settings and poses, giving insight into their complex personalities while accentuating the ties between them. Through her use of oil on canvas, she is able to store emotion with each brush stroke – an art form that speaks volumes. Her inaugural exhibition Spring Fever incorporates many components from her life story intertwined with creative imaginings as it reflects these powerful women whom she has encountered over time.
As a Beijing native, Liu ventured to South Carolina for high school and later graduated from the School of Visual Arts in 2022 with an illustration major. Initially captivated by how stories could be depicted through artwork, she discovered that college assignments were overly limiting.
During her senior year is when it all changed—when painting purely for enjoyment reignited her creativity and allowed her to express herself freely without any constraints. From then on, she was seized by the passion for creating art as a means of uncovering tales within one’s inner world. Painting provided an outlet for her to connect with the world, enabling her to express herself in a manner that words could not.
” Through Liu’s sophisticatedly rendered paintings, she captures the fragmented nature of memory and how our recollections are shaped by emotion, perception, and the passage of time. She searches for small, inadvertent moments and simple recollections, weaving them into her paintings. Liu has a deep fascination with the concept of memory, pondering whether what we remember from the past is what actually happened. Her understanding is that memory itself is a fruit of subjective consciousness, registering emotions at a specific moment rather than an objective fact. Her paintings are condensed and illusory, combining imagined worlds with personal emotions, invoking stories and inviting viewers to connect with the raw, often vulnerable experiences depicted in each work.
In Spring Fever, Liu creates scenes of exquisite emotional depth and resonance. Her aim is to connect with the viewer, inviting them to share in the captivating and sometimes vulnerable experiences depicted in each work.” — YiWei Gallery
