Wanchai Ship Street | Summer

Description

Ma Ling Gallery is honoured to present Summer, an exhibition of new paintings and works on paper by Liu Yin, at our Hong Kong space. This exhibition continues the artist's exploration of natural imagery from her 2023 Spring exhibition, using flora, fruits, lakes, seas, and rocks as mediums to delve into emotions that are either light or tumultuous.

The dozen or so paintings on display at the Ma Ling Gallery's Ship Street space in Wanchai are divided into three parts, arranged in ascending order of scale and emotional intensity. The first series features floating flowers and fruits on a pond surface: works such as River #1 (2025) reflect the interest in small bodies of water like streams and ponds found in the history of modern painting. Pond water is a place where traces linger and the state of life is redefined; the scattered natural objects in the water are chaotic yet ordered, constructing a profound and complex ecosystem beneath what appears to be a shallow surface. In these paintings, Liu continues her signature style of adding cute faces in the style of shōjo manga to flowers, leaves, and fruits, endowing them with consciousness and abundant emotions. They unabashedly express their joy, anger, sorrow, and joy within the emotional network nurtured by the natural environment, and their compositions are orchestrated in conjunction with the viewer's gaze, influenced by factors such as the body and emotions.

The work titled Summer (2025) presents a lush, verdant scene of summer foliage, allowing chaotic, organic, and joyful flora to grow naturally towards the viewer. The large-scale painting Nightfall (2025), exhibited on the second floor of the Ship Street space, depicts a peach tree in the night. Most of the tree's branches and trunk are hidden in the darkness, while the large fruits perched on the branches are illuminated and contemplative, their solemn expressions thoughtful. In creating this work, Liu Yin considered the ukiyo-e prints of Suzuki Harunobu that feature garden landscapes, replacing the human figures commonly found in his works with charming, rotund peaches. Blue Moon (2025) is based on a watercolour piece of the same title created by Liu in 2023, presenting a crystalline moon nestled above a lotus pond. The sleeping lotus turns its face away, unwilling to directly face the moon's cold yet gentle light. The works in this chapter of the Summer exhibition depict slightly lonely creatures, and the serene environments they inhabit are a concretisation of their spiritual landscapes—a place where multiple interconnected yet contradictory inner emotions find solace and harmony.

The two sets of diptych works exhibited on the third floor of the Ship Street space represent the most intense emotional junctures of the Summer exhibition: the large-scale work titled Waves (2024-2025) depicts towering, tumultuous waves, and these waves are composed of numerous faces, their eyes wide with fury. In a rare move, Liu Yin hints at the inseparable nature of non-human beings and their expansive surroundings, praising the potential for emotions to amplify and propagate on their own. Another large painting, Rocks (2025), also portrays a majestic seascape but places faces on the massive reef rocks. These dignified guardians are resilient and silent, appearing as potential allies or foes to the water spirits in Waves, and they even directly stare at the viewer, forming an emotional connection. Amidst the tension of opposition, conflict, and alliance—the vortex in the foreground of the painting, influenced by classic ukiyo-e imagery, symbolises intense emotions—they underscore the significance of emotional expression in intimate experiences.