Beijing Commune is pleased to present "Pomegranate", the second solo exhibition of Liang Yuanwei, two years after her first show "Golden Notes" at the gallery. The show, with the same title of her series painting on paper Pomegranate (2011-2013), including these works on paper, wall paintings and a small set of oil paintings Meaning which she did nine years ago.
The exhibition centers on subjective control and objective uncontrollable. Since Piece of Life (2008) and Golden Notes (2010), the artist pays her patience and meticulous attention to express the accuracy on her paintings, as she said ‘each part of my work must be precise and every partial colour change or element all leading to the result.’ also ‘because the goal is precision, control becomes even more distinct.’ Moreover, the uncontrollable change of the physical quality of the lipsticks and their colors in the process of time has yet fascinated the artist even more to the subject.
In 2011, the artist was committed, by chance, to a small project in which she was supposed to did a piece of art with lipsticks. She decided to do with paper. She scrunched the paper, unfolding it, and then coloured the irregularly geometrical shapes formed by scrunching with lipsticks of various shades of red. The patterns were extremely fresh, bright and translucent as juicy pomegranate at beginning. However, after over a year, the colours on the papers changed and natural creates more subtle shades with time, the result was totally out of the artist’s expectation, but it brings a new richness of the colors that are harmoniously concerted in the new order uninvited.
The colors of the wall paintings in the show are based on the “new colors” create by time and nature on the Pomegranate paintings. The artist asked a designer friend to selected from these new colors, and then define them on the computer with Panton system. They are given to the printing workshop to prepare color sample for the painter, who is supposed to distinguish the colors with his own eye and prepare paint that matches to the sample colors. When the paints are ready, the artist invited a gallery staff to reorganize these new colours and two friends to select two colours and enlarge them to large-scale paintings on the wall. The whole process, with contrition from various people working for it.
Following with that, the Meaning (2004) states the first step of her researching between colours and reflection. The artist scrunch a tinfoil paper to a ball and putted in different colour environments, go through this way to analysis the composition of color and reflection in different environments and finally explain the ‘meaning’ of colour composition. Moreover, by the unconsciously pick of colours and wilful enlarge those colours to indicate
the relation of random and harmony of subjective control and objective uncontrollable.
