2023 | AN TE LIU
SIGNAL TO NOISE
TORONTO
Oct 27 - Dec 22, 2023
Opening: Friday, October 27, from 6-9 PM

In Signal to Noise, Liu has produced a series of works in bronze, aluminum, and earthenware, whose forms and textures straddle the line between organic and man-made. The sculptures emanate from common objects, at times stemming from the artist’s childhood memories, and take their final appearances from allusions to art history, mass culture, and nature. Within their material transformations is an enduring question of how much of the original can be retained, and what is lost in translation.

The exhibition’s title refers to the tendency of a signal to evince a moment that has already passed, and which weakens the farther it recedes in time. Retrieving the true meaning of an original event from its first impulse becomes more difficult as a signal transmutes into something less distinct. Within Liu’s practice, reflections on memory, perception, and material culture speak to these transformative shifts from past to present and the many interpretations that occur in between. 

Mining his own childhood for objects of significance, Liu made casts of the body of a 1964 Vespa VBB, recalling the same model ridden throughout his birthplace of Taiwan at the time, and particularly by the artist’s parents and grandparents. In this abstracted and suspended form, the fragment resembles a bird in flight. Another work in cast aluminum is taken from a common Nerf football, decayed in such a way as to appear coral-like. The work’s resulting colour and pattern coincide with that of a gongshi, or scholar’s rock – pitted and perforated stones used as features in Chinese gardens, the most valued of which are sculpted by natural erosion. 

Sports equipment appears throughout the series of works in the forms of punching bags, boxing gloves, and helmets. Citing Le Corbusier’s keen interest in incorporating exercise into one’s home, as seen in his drawing, “Boxing in the Hanging Gardens of a Collective Apartment” (1928), Liu explores the Modernist ideal of pure form as it extends to the discipline and efficiency of refining the body. Particularly, this occurs through the lens of a modern world often considered to be a terrain of intractable, competitive struggle. 

Throughout Signal to Noise, the sculptures consistently reveal that perception and memory are intrinsically unfixed. Conjuring a sense of alienness alongside familiarity, Liu’s new works play with the dilemma of perception in terms of objects and images, and their relationships to either realism or idealism. Do objects possess an inherent power to invoke their own representations within us? By complicating the duality between material and representation, Liu offers a renewed opportunity to see the world around us with fresh eyes.

Artist talk | Saturday December 2, 2pm

Blouin Division is pleased to invite you to an artist talk by An Te Liu, in conjunction with his new gallery exhibition, Signal to Noise. The artist will discuss the themes behind the exhibition, including allusions to childhood memories, architecture, mass culture, and nature.