My work explores the latent mythologies behind our ever-changing news cycles. There are hidden narratives, inflamed by our passions and beliefs, which underlie the daily bombardment from our news media. My artwork taps into the unsaid, the mute understandings within the collective imagination, to make solid these latent energies.
I have gathered a small pantheon of figures to harness these unspoken mythologies. My work consists of sculptural casts of these figures, arranged in various poses and situations. The setup is knowingly classical, to pull forward the long tradition of figural sculpture, to remind us of the power of figures in the round, sharing our space, expressing through comportment and posture. In this sense, they are easily “read” and apprehended by each of us; this approach makes the art accessible and present.
At the same time, these works tap into our moment and its attendant anxieties. Albert Camus has a line which has stuck with me — “the adolescent furies of our age”. My work takes the long view, attempting to pull strands of history and tie them to the present, to encourage us to reflect on the dialectical interplay of history with society, of our actions with our hopes and passions.
One figure in the pantheon, Dark Cygnus, materializes the famous Black Swan metaphor of Nassim Nicholas Taleb. The Black Swan is the unpredictable and irrational event which changes the course of history, gaining its power in our imagination and through its follow-on effects. (A canonical example is the attack on the World Trade Center twin towers.) Donald Trump and his acolytes often tease violence, with the unspoken aim of their own Black Swan events, acts of stochastic terrorism.
In the runup to the US presidential election in 2024, it was hard to ignore these subtle calls for violence. I created a pose for my figure, entitled Dark Cygnus, Take Care, which flashes the hand signal George Santos made in a photo op, a “white power” signal used by domestic terrorist groups. Shortly after I removed the mold from its cast, an assassination attempt was made on Trump. Ironically, the calls to violence boomeranged back to its leader, and, in his survival, a modern myth was enacted that day. This is the kind of brewing — at times unsettling — energy that my work explores.
Bio
Victor Liu is an American artist (born Taipei, Taiwan) who explores the latent mythologies behind our ever-changing news cycles. His work takes the form of half-size cast figures, and sometimes through writing. He is a 2014 graduate of the SVA Art Practice MFA program, and recently exhibited his sculpture in a two-person exhibition at PS122 Gallery in New York. He lives and works in New York City.
Contact
[e] v@victorliu.art
[p] (917) 459-3596
[instagram] @victorliu.art