1. In your personal artistic statement, you mention that your paintings involve your thoughts on the human condition. How is this reflected in your work?

For me it is about the desire to see things and express things as well as I can, with a sense of aliveness through feeling. In a broader sense, I think about the desire to live and how painting is able to talk about that. With that, I’m particularly interested in the relationship between painting and the spirit; how a painting can both consciously and unconsciously reflect, express and can influence our inner sense of perception and worldview. What’s most important to me is how painting and art can create a place for love and understanding within.

2. Some of your works feature specific objects connected to the natural world and your surroundings, such as stars, the sun, chairs, and blankets. You also depict portraits of your friends, although not in this exhibition. What do these objects mean to you, and why do you choose to present them? Do they symbolize something in your expression?

I like symbols because they talk about basic and universal ideas. The symbols and things such as the sun or a house, themselves aren’t really the subject , but rather act as a vessel or placeholder for what I want to talk about. I feel like they help to articulate and describe the essence of an idea.

3. Some of your works are abstract and lack specific forms. Do these pieces have concrete sources, or are you exploring something intrinsic to painting itself?

When the paintings don’t have clear images, I’m thinking more so about the materiality of paint, and the feeling that’s created in the action and process of painting. But they are mostly influenced by daily experiences, people, art, stains on walls, music, or the color and light of things. I think the paintings are more a psychological process of finding the essence or impression of these experiences and then translating them.

4. Most of your works are not large in size but have a heavy texture and rough brushwork. Knowing your age, one might experience a contrast between the work and you. Can you discuss why you present this quality in your art?

I use heavy paints because I like the immediate and punchy feeling that it evokes, and its sensitivity to the energy of the canvas and the brush. The thick layers of paint accumulates on the canvas over time as I paint, and because of the presence of paintings underneath each other. It feels like rewriting a version of myself by doing this, like the painting reincarnates into whatever it wants to become each time I paint over it. I also like to think that the surface of the canvas holds its own energetic memory of things that was painted on it, even if it can’t be seen.

5. You mention that your painting is fluid and transient, connected with music, dance, and memory. Why do you say that?

I often think of memory and transience in my painting as in Karma. How each thing is connected to what comes before and what comes after; the transient cycle of death and rebirths of being that paintings go through before it becomes itself. With dance and music, it feels very similar in its nature but in different form to painting. For painting there’s the gestures and movements of the hands, the rhythm and speed of the marks, and the way colours vibrate and interact with one another in harmonious or violent ways.

6. Although you have participated in several group exhibitions, including one at Approach Gallery in London this summer, this is your first solo exhibition since graduating from Camberwell in London. It presents your creative practice over the past two years. What are your expectations for this exhibition in Shanghai?

Yes, it’s very exciting to be showing in Shanghai. I’m very grateful for the opportunity to show the paintings that I have made. Thank you.