Title: IconGenie-Shanghai
Year: 2022
Size: 73x61cm
Technique: Mixed media on canvas

As I drive my car past a small mountain village, I often see a group of little houses in the distance, stretching from the lower to the higher areas along the ridge, layered and built next to each other. The landscape reminds me of toy blocks like LEGO or any assembled models that I would play with as a child. At one point, the gathering of these houses starts to converge as a single mass in my eyes, then later I start moving the mass around in my imagination. In my inner world, the mass overlaps with an the appearance of Pegasus, the beloved horse of Bellerophon the hero of Greek mythology, or Icarus or Peter Pan, who could fly here and there in a matter of seconds. From then on, finally, I start to imagine the mass as an image of buildings on the move or even the movement of spaces. In my works, the terms ‘unit’ and ‘mass’ are used to express the central subject called ‘Icon B.’ The unit indicates a pentagon, a simplified shape of a house, and the mass a cluster of these units gathering together and building into layers. I named a combination of those units and masses Icon B. Icon B is a picture of ever-changing images that can freely go back and forth in the world that I visualise. These images are manifested through a figurative language in the form of lines, colors and surfaces. The web of lines all over the picture is a sort of medium via which Icon B can move toward a space of imagination, and it’s a map of an actual city as well. Icon B also creates a sense of movement along the map, and it may be a symbol of ourselves dreaming of moving from our physical dwelling into a space of imagination beyond our daily routine and toward endless freedom.