Photographs of remote clapboard houses, disused water parks and haunting interiors are the point from which my paintings start. I feel that apart from being images of horror or catastrophe the dialectic between the banal and the momentous is what intrigues me about such imagery. I am also interested in the psychological effect such environments have on us. The dual notions of the familiar/unfamiliar, intrigue/repulsion, beauty/horror etc, are themes that I attempt to deal with through my practice; essentially I wish to render the familiar and commonplace, strange and threatening. Part of what inspires me to use the medium of paint for this, is that it can be so many things at the same time, from immediate to slow, powdery to slick, thick to thin, delineated to evanescent. It is these inherent contradictions that I exploit in order to bring me close to the unease I wish to convey.
Speaking about Hitchcock's film The Birds, the philosopher Slavov Zizek describes the moment they attack, as '..a foreign dimension intruding upon the domestic space ripping apart the sense of reality..' he goes on to state that, '..when our proper dwelling within a symbolic space is disturbed, reality disintegrates.' I see the poured paint or the areas of impasto within my own paintings operating in a similar way. These techniques are employed to intrude upon the figurative elements of my work. They are an attempt to disrupt and destabilize the image and to try to articulate the emotional response that I have towards my source material. Essentially I want my work to oscillate between the accurate representation of a subject and the complete annihilation of it
I remember when I was 18 or so I would go to nightclubs in Manchester and take E or acid and shadows shifting up and down the walls swans, red glass purred me to sleep candle at my mum's ornaments...
The show is a reflection of Liu Bolin's multifaceted and complex view of contemporary society and culture. The critically acclaimed and internationally renowned artist will release the first works of a new series, Hiding in California.
