Liú Yung-Jen was born in Chishang Township, Taitung County, Taiwan, and graduated from the Department of Fine Arts at Chinese Culture University in 1983. He later traveled to Italy, where he spent eight years broadening his horizons, eventually graduating from the Brera Academy in Milan in 1995. As a student, he explored art and himself primarily through painting, and for many years since, has developed careers as both a professional artist and curator. Born under the star sign of Gemini, Liú has proceeded on a dual track and produced substantial results. Although he is well known in the art world for his work as a curator at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, for many years he has dedicated himself to his own artwork and ideas, which are worthy of closer inspection.

 

Since 1990, Liú has developed lyrical expression into abstract compositions, but his aesthetic has always been focused on the inevitability of sudden variations in space and time. He began considering the concept of breathing in the mid 1990s, and in the process of joining this concept to his painting practice, cultivated a profound notion regarding painting as breathing, and took this awareness as a point of departure for further development in his work. In addition to using oil paint, Liú affixes beeswax and lead foil to his paintings in order to produce color and luster that are both translucent and mild, and to give his work its distinct spirituality. Furthermore, Liú has recently rendered one of his important painting motifs in three dimensions by casting it in various metals to produce kinetic sculptures.

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Liú often uses arcs to meticulously weave together time and space in a way that creates both lighthearted and profound feelings. Starlight is interspersed among the arcs, peeking out here and there, to suggest the power of physical space. The infinite arcs of the universe can be perceived in Liú's paintings, which slowly, harmoniously, and absolutely unite into one. Each painting is a moment in time and fragment of space that can extend or shift infinitely in the mind. Fluidly breathing starlight and triangular lotus pods permeate the deep layers of a field and represent a long journey of natural transformations, as well as continuous and infinite change.

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