LIU Cong: Given

REFLEXION is pleased to announce the solo exhibition “Given” by Liu Cong on May 10th, 2025. The exhibition extends Liu Cong’s “Paper” series, in which the image of “paper” serves as the visual vehicle, conveying an emotional and spiritual vibe through measured cadence and subtle color variations.

What my work offers is an object to be viewed and experienced from a personal perspective. Formally it is a logic of “using things to create things,” while spiritually it is a logic of “using the fake (the realistic) to deliver the genuine (the reality). ” So in my understanding, painting is an existence that can be felt..

— LIU Cong

The gaze crosses the surface in a properly smooth fashion, without being too sharp. Lightsome reflections and subtle sense of light swing between reality and illusion. Limited geometric vocabulary builds a rigorous visual structure, while the fluctuating rhythm of colors serves as an aesthetic measure that is nearly precise. The fold 1 extends infinitely in the gallery space, “folds, unfolds, refolds” 2. In this space, the weight of gesture and mind fails stealthily. It is the One, it is also the Multiple. It is the phenomenal world of the current moment and location, the infinite iteration, the elimination of boundaries.

Through the adjustment of minute variables such as colors, lines and geometric shapes, Liu Cong’s painting, with constant calibration and refinement, pursues an accurate expression. By differentiating and repeating, he views and contemplates the connections and structures of the world around him in a more profound and precise way, trying to reach a spiritual and contemplative viewing experience through physical operations. In the Paper Series, the artist uses paper models that he calls “sketches”. He introduces the models as though it is a channel of transition between concept and reality, and an entrance to a creative mental space. Switching between the three-dimensional reality of the model and the aesthetic judgment of the language of painting, he makes possible an abstract expression that is even purer. This is a shift in Liu Cong’s recent work.

In his long-term dedication to painting, the artist has realized the existence of a symbiotic relationship between himself and art, which can be defined as mutual giving. An aura is generated through the juxtaposition of the exhibition’s title “Given” and the works being exhibited. “Given” is also a reality, and a connection. It suggests that art is an open aesthetic creation about encounter and spiritual connection, and a journey of self-fulfillment between finite contradictions and infinite diversity. It is just like the solid structure of image on canvas, which often remains a state of openness and permanent flow at the same time.

1&2 Deleuze, Gilles. The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque. 1988.

Text / Yang Fan