liukincheloe[at]gmail.com

liukincheloe[at]gmail.com

Liu Kincheloe (b. 1985, lives and works in Brooklyn) relates to the esoteric capacity of ornament—referencing mythology, religious iconography, alchemical traditions, and sacred geometry. Taking an interest in systems of symbolism that often assign families of correspondence and meaning to familiar forms and natural elements, there’s a preference to view abstraction as a site potentially loaded with meaning and archetypal association rather than of viewing formalism at a sense of remove or extraction. Playing between representation and abstraction and mixing viewing contexts, cultural referents and time periods is a strategy to enrich the image in a mode of proto-language.

Choosing to approach painting patterns as a devotional experience—local form, its placement, color, and numerical weight can potentially take on symbolic consideration, as works aspire to be a functional sigils. The structural bones of the paintings often start with a reflected motif that is unfolded in mirror symmetry— where new, unplanned forms appear in the axis of reflection. Symmetry unfolds the original selection into a new image, and new forms are found and culled in this process. The inter-relationship of form within pattern is special because adjacent forms co-create each other—positive form and negative space become interchangeable in daisy chain. In this way, symmetrical pattern is a device to denote transcendence, and painting these repetitive designs is a meditative act of embodying that relationship.