Luo-Han Chen
Degree: Fine Art MFA
University: Newcastle University
Graduation Year: 2023
New Blood Art Commentary
You know those phrases like - can’t see the wood for the trees..? About how proximity distorts perception? With Luo-Han Chen.. the concept almost feels inverted.
From a distance Luo-Han’s paintings read as suspended atmosphere. Muted indigo, ash, bruised violet - it’s a kind of cosmic weather. Her work grows from a state of inner contradiction - the body minuscule, yet perception boundless.
Fractals, Fibonacci, sacred geometry - up close we find constellations and patterns stitched with almost-invisible linear tracings. Points of structural light, mapping connection points and creating near invisible underlying systems.
It’s an amazing achievement to collapse distance in paint and hold the scale shift like this - at one register we find the astronomical - nebulae, dark matter, star charts and at another the cellular - spores, pollen, mineral bloom, microscopic life. The macro and micro occupy the same plane - where the universe behaves like lichen and lichen behaves like the universe.
I haven’t seen work like it. Luo-Han graduated in 2023, she held her first solo show last year. This is a remarkable emerging artist with a truly unique vision. Works are currently available from three figures - a compelling entry point for collectors engaging early with a distinctive emerging voice.
Artist Statement
I work with mineral pigments on paper and silk. Drawn from the earth, these pigments carry a will of their own, and the painting’s final form emerges through my negotiation with them.
In Night Atlas, moths, orchids, and other unnameable forms surface and recede. Points of light are scattered across the picture plane and connected by intuition. The gesture recalls one of humanity’s oldest acts: to draw order and myth from chaos. Constellations are not given forms in nature, but traces of projection. I make constellations of my own. Meaning is made, yet no less real for being made.
Through these works, I explore uncertainty and perception in flux. Forms appear, dissolve, and return, shifting vision from recognition towards sensation. What emerges is not a fixed image, but a slowly summoned sense of being.
Shaped by long attention to small lives, tidal rhythms, and breath, my imagery resists clarity and invites sustained attention. These floating forms are what I leave behind: places to inhabit, briefly, and dissolve into.
Solo Exhibitions
(2025) Quiet Fragments, Xa-art, Taipei, Taiwan
Group Exhibitions
(2023) Surface Matters, Audain Gallery, Canada
(2023) Counterpart, Newcastle University, UK
(2020) MFA Interim Show, Star and Shadow, UK
(2020) Flotation Devices, Audain Gallery, Canada
(2018) Now, New Taipei City Art Centre, Taiwan
(2016) Schrödinger’s Cat Tin, Dechun Gallery, Taiwan