EMBRACE FROM THE STAR
来自星体的拥抱
 

Luan has long maintained a deep interest in the history of marine art. Having grown up alongside the sea, tides and waves became an inseparable part of his life. Drawing connections between the natural phenomena he documented during his travels in Portugal and concepts of physics, he links gravity and the movement of liquids through image-making and painting. He is particularly attentive to water as a liquid body shaped by gravitational force. In contrast to contemporary perspectives, Luan believes that every era develops its own firm conception of nature and a corresponding mode of coexistence with it: from fear, worship, and conquest to symbiosis. The difference between worldview and understanding determines the art of each age and drives the working methods chosen by painters throughout history. Luan sees himself as having grown up in an era fueled by technology and explosive visions of the future, a time in which humanity’s plans for interstellar expansion have formally entered implementation.

Within this framework, he approaches ocean waves through the physical properties of liquid movement. People often speak of water as something formless, yet when he stood in Nazaré, Portugal, before some of the largest waves in the world, and captured their movement at almost dangerous proximity, he observed that the rise and pull of the waves—their textures and dotted patterns—moved along trajectories of near-digital precision. He physically experienced tides as the result of gravitational forces between celestial bodies and the centrifugal force generated by Earth’s rotation.

Patterns that would normally appear fragmented within small ripples became, through close observation and the immense scale of the waves, elements of profound fascination. To him, these textures possess a dangerous seductive quality. Layer upon layer of painting transforms them into luminous forms resembling the tongues of deep-sea creatures extending outward from gigantic wave-like mouths. He spent long periods searching for these patterns, experimenting with different materials and tools, building them up repeatedly in layers.“I enjoy this process. They are free, yet arranged according to strict physical laws. They are creations belonging both to nature and to painting. When a moving wave becomes a frozen image, the performative action of painting begins to generate a subtle movement within stillness. This emerges through the combined effect of painterly materials, perception, light, and image.”