Fluffy Jest

→ 2023

He set himself on fire before the cathedral, 2023
Oil on canvas
160 x 120cm

The "Fluffy Jest" series presents a transformative take on familiar objects, endowing—or perhaps revealing—their own whimsically soft, and sometimes unsettlingly plush, exteriors. Each piece begins with an AI-generated image, a foundation that is both algorithmically conceived and strikingly novel. Upon first glance, the artworks may evoke memories of Dali's "Lobster Telephone" (1938) or Magritte's "The Treachery of Images (This Is Not a Pipe)" (1929), where the everyday is juxtaposed with the surreal, challenging perceptions of reality and comfort.

The AI’s touch introduces 'errors'—asymmetrical cello necks, skewed lipsticks, and other anomalies—imbuing the works with a character that defies conventional symmetry and perfection. In the process of painting, I preserved the AI’s ‘mistakes’, a conscious choice that highlights the peculiar charm of its computational creativity. These are not errors to be corrected but rather celebrated—quirks that add depth and complexity to the narrative of each piece. They are the artifacts of AI from the year 2023, a timestamp of the technology's evolution, a fossil record of machine learning’s journey and its interpretive dance with the physical world.

There was no clock，2023
Oil on canvas
100 x 80cm

Each piece in "Fluffy Jest" is marked with a sentence, a fragment of dialogue that has been precisely quoted from real-life scenarios. These are not the negations of Magritte, but affirmations grounded in reality—phrases that have been uttered in exactitude. For instance, in "There's no clocks," a phrase is placed alongside a fluffy green cactus. The title is drawn from an exhibition "Struggle for Freedom" held at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in 2019, honoring Nelson Mandela. The exhibition not only highlighted Mandela's efforts to abolish apartheid but also featured a small, windowless room measuring 2.43 by 2.13 meters, representing the cell where Mandela spent 18 of his 27 years in prison. Visitors were invited to sit in this room for 27 minutes to contemplate Mandela's 27-year incarceration. One participant remarked post-experience, "There's no clocks. You don't know when the door will open again." This grammatically incorrect sentence, once repurposed in my artwork, transforms the inherently dangerous and prickly cactus into something akin to a microphone, softly broadcasting the explosive statement, "There's no clocks," suggesting a confrontation with one's own torment in the absence of demise.

The fragments selected for this series often appear mundane, yet in their original contexts, they allude to domestic violence, murder, rape, and other forms of violence embedded in the banality of daily life. The ambiguity of the sentences reflects the latent violence within the ordinary, akin to the message conveyed through the fluff: humanity is never smooth. "Fluffy Jest" thus plays on the duality of appearance and reality, the soft and the sharp, inviting viewers to contemplate the complex layers of human nature.

I heard you，2023
Oil on canvas
60 x 60cm

It was an afternoon，2023
Oil on canvas
80 x 80cm

I don’t，2023
Oil on canvas
50 x 40cm

Take a picture of our future，2023
Oil on canvas
80x 100cm

Shi Liu

My Virtual Friends LOVe letter frame of Consciousness The modern tower of babel Fluffy JestVicious dolls No Stop About Instagram

My Virtual Friends
LOVe letter
frame of Consciousness
The modern tower of babel
Fluffy Jest
Vicious dolls
No Stop

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