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 across paper, silk, cloth, and earthen surfaces. My practice centres on the relationships between light, matter, and perception. Through attention and negotiation with pigments, fibre, clay, and the particular nature of each material, I allow the painting to emerge through the process.

In the Night Atlas series, moths, orchids, faint light, and other unnameable forms surface and recede. Points of light are scattered across the picture plane; I connect them by intuition. It is an old impulse: to find order in darkness, to weave myth from scattered light. Constellations are not forms given by nature, but relationships waiting to be perceived. In my paintings, I both discover and compose constellations of my own. Meaning emerges where perception meets material, and where discovery and making intertwine.

Forms appear, dissolve, and return, shifting vision from recognition towards sensation. Shaped by close, sustained attention to small lives, tidal rhythms, breath, and the subtle mutations of matter, my imagery resists clarity and asks for stillness, for the viewer's time and continued presence.

These floating forms are what I leave behind, for myself and for the viewer: places where perception lingers, and where meaning slowly surfaces.