LIU WENQI
WHAT REMAINS, WHAT FADES

Le soleil de la brume

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I enjoy working in series, each centred around a specific theme, often focusing on subtle elements of daily life that are easily overlooked yet constantly present.

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This series began with a desire to return to an original emotion—the feeling I had when I first encountered ceramics and created my earliest works.

When I first touched ceramics, I knew almost nothing about the material. It was precisely this “ignorance” that drove me to explore all its possible potentials. I was entirely self-taught, and my practice developed alongside my learning and experimentation with the material. It felt somewhat like walking in a mist: only what is close to me is visible, while the distant landscape gradually unfolds, step by step, like a bud slowly opening before my eyes.

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My process has always been accompanied by doubt and uncertainty, both technically and conceptually. I remain deeply fascinated by this experimental mode of creation.

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However, as my knowledge of ceramics deepened, this feeling gradually faded. Mastery and control over the material became increasingly important, and with that, the initial sense of uncertainty—and the pleasure of creation through accident—slowly disappeared.

Looking back at this state, and attempting to recover the conditions of that way of working, became the main driving force behind this series.

In terms of process, once I establish the initial form of a work, I build it through the layering of clay, almost like papier calque. Through these successive layers, subtle variations in tone begin to emerge. Due to the nature of the technique, I must think in reverse—almost as in a mirror—anticipating the final result while constructing each layer.

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Additionally, the colours of ceramics change significantly before and after firing. The palette I use consists of very low-saturation tones that are already extremely close to one another, making their differences almost imperceptible before firing. This adds another level of complexity to the process. In this sense, creating these works feels like painting in the mist—a state where control is never complete, echoing my earliest experience of learning ceramics.

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The series is titled Le soleil de la brume (The Sun in the Mist), referring to a state between clarity and obscurity, light and darkness.

Light and shadow became the central theme of this series because they exist in a space between abstraction and figuration. Shadows, generated by the sun, produce images that are not immediately intuitive. What ultimately completes the image is the viewer’s imagination—shaped by their own lived experience—so that each person perceives something different.

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I see my work as a way of visualising my creative consciousness through material. At the same time, it reflects how we rely on imagination to “see” when details are removed and focus is blurred.

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The series employs a wide range of greys, with subtle variations that nevertheless form a unified whole. Grey, as a state between black and white, carries a sense of restraint and non-aggression, echoing a kind of equilibrium found in Eastern philosophy.

In addition to perspectival painting, some works also incorporate relief elements, existing between two and three dimensions.

Through these works, I hope to explore the relationship between things and perception, while also making visible the creative process as it unfolds through material.

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La valse du temps

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From childhood onwards, what we see, hear, and feel begins to develop a capacity to replicate the past, leaving behind image-like imprints of memory. These sensory perceptions form inner images that reappear throughout our lives.

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Through poetic memory and a microscopic scale of perception, I seek to express those invisible yet undeniably present traces of life. This dual exploration—between absence and presence, time and eternity—runs consistently through my practice.

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The river of memory is a continuous, unceasing process. As time passes, certain imprints become blurred, or even entirely erased, no longer retrievable or recognisable. The perception of forgetting thus becomes the central motif of the series The Waltz of Time.

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In these works, the memories of fish are written in Braille. Memory, too, is an image that can be touched without the eyes. It is a reading of the soul, a silent trace of time that has passed. Even with our eyes closed, we can still see those memories engraved deep within us, as if they had never truly disappeared.

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After experiencing many unanticipated farewells, I came to understand that leaving without warning is the natural condition of life. Whether it is the departure of a loved one or the passage of time, many separations occur quietly, without notice. Only memory persists after these sudden absences, embedding itself deeply within us, becoming perhaps the only form of eternity we can grasp. And yet, even this memory may one day fade…

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In the end, are the fleeting moment and eternity not simply two manifestations of the same reality?

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The Waltz of Time is a series that explores life, memory, time, and recollection. Through the textures and forms of ceramics, and the metaphor of Braille, it seeks to capture the ungraspable nature of time and the evanescence of memory. It transforms the intangible into the tangible, sublimating fleeting moments into a form of poetic eternity—gently swaying with the ripples of life.

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