Luo-Han Chen
Degree: Fine Art MFA
University: Newcastle University
Graduation Year: 2023
New Blood Art Commentary
The paintings feel like psyche before symbol - matter gathering itself into emergence. They carry the tremor of formation: constellations flickering across a field that could be the night sky, cell structure, or a dream. Each form emerging as if remembered by the surface.
They work at the threshold between substance and spirit - what Bion might call the “preconception” of thought. The field receives projection, metabolises it, and gives it back as image. In one, a moth appears, its wings barely there - Eros rising out of the dark of Thanatos. In another, a tree, though its branches seem to breathe; and the form could just as easily be lungs.
Light also behaves like psyche: stains, seeps, returns. The granular texture reads as repression made visible - what is held back in consciousness dispersing into cosmic dust. Luo-Han Chen paints containment itself - the maternal field, the holding environment. Paintings of the unconscious in its natural state: unbounded, connective, seeking coherence.
What remains after looking is suspension - the same suspension felt between two breaths, between being and knowing.
Artist Statement
Luo-Han Chen (Taipei, Taiwan) works with mineral pigments on paper and silk. Her paintings often explore soft edges, drift, and nocturnal light across ongoing series such as Night Atlas, Tidal Breath, and Ocean Memories. Forms appear, fade, and re-form as perception shifts from seeing to sensing. Drawing on rhythms found in non-human systems, Chen’s imagery keeps boundaries porous and invites slow attention.
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