Curated by Alessandro Rolandi

Dates: March 5th – April 9th 2016

Opening: March 5th at 4pm

These endless intersections of lines articulate the positive and negative space in a dense plot of plans, surfaces and patterns in which the liveliness of ink is limited but not constrained. Despite the accuracy of the process, there is no trompe-l’oeil effect, or attempt to mime or reproduce a certain texture to cheat the eye. The weave of the ink lines blends into the weave of the rice paper fibers, but it resists interpretation and symbolism, remaining basically “just what it is”.

Although Liu Deng sometimes divides his paintings into two halves or three sections in which the pattern mutates, pairing primary colors or simply decreasing or increasing the intensity and the tone of one tint, an almost “natural” drive seems to push his works towards the disappearance of colors, favoring a delicate black or grey line. One day, perhaps this line will become white and blend completely into the paper, leaving traces that can be clearly perceived (because the surface has been touched and washed and consequently bent and warped) but are almost invisible to the eye. It is only towards the end of the time we spent together, after a meal, that he “confessed” how he dreams of making a painting with a pattern of thousands of invisible interlaced lines.

Liu Deng’s paintings stand in front of us in their structure and in their presence, hiding nothing, referring nothing, implying nothing, refusing an explicit causality beyond the artist’s necessity to act and his feeling “comfortable,” “shufu,” just by engaging in the gestures that bring them into existence.

We can like them or not, project meaning onto them or not, or criticize them, but they will remain mute and present.

There is no attempt to seduce us or to manipulate our perception, just their presence.