Dapeng Liu resides in Sydney, Australia where he creates art that sits at the intersections of his cross cultural identity. Born in Beijing, Dapeng holds a unique cultural lens which enables him to interrogate the past and present of the fusion between East and West.
Dapeng’s art is evocative and thought provoking. His practice is defined by an astute sense of perception and striking nuanced application of colour, composition and form. The contemporary landscape paintings are infused with traditional storytelling and marked by deep thinking, precision and subtle humour.
With a Bachelor of Arts degree followed by a MA by research degree, Dapeng spent three years working towards a PhD degree in art history at the University of Sydney with the support of an Australian Post Graduate Award. Dapeng’s research examined traditional Chinese art and culture as well as the modernisation of art in China. This insight has enabled Dapeng to critically engage with the subject of creation; exploring mountain-scapes and waters-capes, which lead to his over riding focus on the relationship between nature and humankind.
A three-times Archibald Prize finalist (2022, 2021, 2014), Dapeng’s highly commended piece Portrait of Yin Cao on blue-and-green landscape was among the top six shortlisted finalists of Archibald Prize 2014. His most recent solo exhibitions are Stillness Juxtaposed, Art Atrium Sydney (2023), Dapeng Liu: Void, Western Sydney University (2022); Land Water Shapes, Art Atrium Sydney (2021) and Shan Shui Australis, Vermilion Art Sydney (2018). His works are held in private and public collections in Australia and internationally.
OTOMYS: You grew up in China, yet moved to Australia to study Chinese art history. What is the significance of this decision in the formation of your artistic practice?
DAPENG LIU: For me, moving from China to Australia in 2007 marked a pivotal shift from the familiar surroundings of my mother culture to the challenges and opportunities of a new and diverse environment.
Born in Beijing in 1982, I spent my formative years during China’s post-1979 ‘opening and reform’ era. This period, characterised by increased exposure to the outside world, fuelled my curiosity about different cultures and values, and motivated my decision to relocate abroad.
My post-80s’ generation experienced the sharp transformation from China’s isolation in the world to the new goal of reaching parity with the industrialized countries, through emphasis on science and technology. The education system therefore skewed towards the sciences. At the same time, teaching paid little attention to the world outside China. Furthermore, education insufficiently taught China’s own history, as well as its traditional culture and values.
For example, I began to learn drawing and painting in Western styles from a very young age, through art education based on the Soviet system, meaning we learned a derivation of European academic art. Our learning focused on technical skills at the expense of staying abreast of international mainstream developments in modern and contemporary art. I grew up memorising names such as Da Vinci, Rembrandt, and Monet but did not know whom Rothko, Basquiat, and Jeff Koons were until many years later.
My arrival in Australia availed me of opportunities to fill in the gaps in my learning and education. I eagerly familiarised myself with the subjects that had always interested me, such as Western intellectual history, social movements, and of course, the evolution of modern art and contemporary art. Simultaneously, through my study at the University of Sydney, I embarked on the rediscovery of my Chinese heritage by systematically exploring Chinese art history through academic research.
Many people have asked me why I chose to study Chinese art history in Australia. My reply speaks to the relationship between the content of the material and methods of analysis. Chinese art serves as the content, while the Australian higher education system and its pedagogy in academic theoretical framing have provided me with the methodological tools to better understand the content.
In essence, my decision to move to Australia initiated a dual learning journey concurrently navigating the knowledge of East and West. This ongoing process remains integral to shaping the art I create today.
OTOMYS: There is a poetic dissonance in your work, expressed as conversations between nature and the man-made, between the East and the West, and between traditional and contemporary art. How do you approach art making to reveal dissonance?
DL: The concept of poetic dissonance in my work is fascinating. I appreciate the thoughtful framing of this question. Feedback on my paintings often touches on perceptions of calmness and tranquillity; however, the underlying tension is not always noticed. It is a tension that resides more in the layers of meaning than overtly in the visual composition. The majority of my works are premeditated. Detailed planning precedes the actual painting process, involving drafts, colour tests and adjustments of composition to ensure a sophisticated outcome. While randomness and accidental effects play a role, they are controlled accidents in the larger artistic orchestration.
If the immediate feeling of calmness of my paintings is a result of conscious choice, the implicit tension in my works reflects a subconscious interplay with the complexities of my intellectual journey. As previously discussed, my learning trajectory encompasses both Eastern and Western knowledge. I have been engaging with Western philosophy to try better understand the world that we live in and to find meaning in my artistic exploration. Simultaneously, I also investigate the traditional Chinese concept of “Heaven-Earth-Human’, which conceptualises the human nature relationship and focuses on achieving a harmonious state of unity. This is a utopian vision that aligns with the unfinished tasks of Modernism in art- seeking a universal visual language to unify diverse cultures.
Amidst the contemporary backdrop of increased cultural conflicts, and reflecting on the theories of unification, my paintings respond to this paradox. I juxtapose natural landscapes with translucent geometric shapes symbolising the man-made. I also visualise ancient Chinese cosmological concepts through contemporary painting techniques with oil paints. Ultimately, I strive for a state of harmony in my paintings by embracing the coexistence of dissonance. In this regard, I see my artworks as a contemplative space where conflicting elements and contrasting concepts intricately converse.
OTOMYS: As a full time artist with a MA by Research and worked three years towards a PhD in art history, how has your academic background shaped you as an artist?
DL: I commenced my artistic journey in 2014 after five years of postgraduate research at the University of Sydney. The scope of my studies in art history spanned from Buddhist art of pre-modern China to the influence of Western art movements in early twentieth century China. My experience in academic research provided nourishment for my artistic creativity. More crucially, the mentality that I developed through research encouraged me to question many common assumptions held in the artistic world and in society. Academic research has also equipped me with tools to begin to answer these questions.
Learning to apply philosophical methodologies helps in dialectical and indepth understanding of a number of subjects that have long interested me. These include the thousand-year old tradition of mountain-and-water landscape painting in China, ancient cosmology, and the multi-vanishing point perspective technique. I have been able to include these fields of knowledge in my artistic exploration. However, I have sometimes approached these subjects using different theories and philosophies in order to question norms and to extract new possibilities. This eclectic approach sits at the root of the evolution of my works in my ten years of painting.
Equally significant are the research skills cultivated during my academic years- critical thinking, time management, goal identification and problem solving. I believe these skills are quietly at play in my creative processes, helping me formulate new themes, making plans for projects, identifying and analysing the social and cultural contexts in which my works exist, and even optimising my studio workflow. Thus, my academic training helps me to conceptually frame my art practice. It also helps to support and guide the formulation of my ideas as well as the implementation of self-reflection.
OTOMYS: It appears that your work is in a constant evolution, what is it that occupies your current practice?
DL: Over the past decade, centring on my main subject- landscape, my artistic journey has undergone a series of explorations of various techniques, styles, and experiments with visual elements, leading to a discernible evolution of my practice.
My early series show the combined influences of surrealism and traditional Chinese landscape art. Subsequently, I was also drawn to styles including colour field painting, hard edge painting, and minimalism. My interests span both abstract and representational methods, grounded in the habit of live sketching based on direct observation, while my studio paintings predominantly emerge from the realm of the imagination.
Despite the diversity in styles, the constant thread in my artistic inquiry has been the exploration of the human-nature relationship. This theme serves as the nucleus in my work, providing coherence across my various series. Rather than a random exploration, each style I adopt becomes a visual language responding to this central interrogation.
The concept of the human-nature relationship can be broad and vague. It is open to interpretation in the varying religious, philosophical and environmental contexts. My current practice is more concerned with the human-nature relationship in the present, such as the human impact on the environment and the underlying factors in that dynamic.
This exploration culminated in my recent project in late 2023, “Stillness Juxtaposed”. It represents a bold departure from my previous works. Instead of depicting harmony or tension within a single image, I dissect the humannature bond in two separate paintings displayed side by side. In this project, I created eight pairs of paintings, each comprising two works of the same size. On the left, audiences view serene and often abstract landscapes while on the right, I recreate real-world images sourced from the Internet, superimposing them with painted texts, constituting my personal commentary on society, the environment, philosophy and consumerism. This deliberate depiction of a dichotomy between the peaceful realm and the jarring reality creates a strong contrast between imagination and reality, as well as unity and disorder. This representation of paradox encapsulates the essence of my current artistic pursuits.