5+1 Gallery is currently hosting Huang Liyan's solo exhibition in Guangzhou, showing a series of new paintings by the artist. An interesting feature of this exhibition is the inclusion of selected short WeChat posts written by the artist himself. The exhibition will run until June 29th.

Huang Liyan's paintings explore the intersection of reality and psychological states, focusing on the spiritual dilemmas individuals face in contemporary environments. Through his work, he constructs a unique personal narrative. His style employs dislocation, collage, symbolic imagery, and surreal compositions to create a visual experience that drifts between reality and dream. He is skilled in using metaphor, combining figures, animals, and objects in absurd ways to build a visual language that exists between reality and fiction. This creates an atmosphere that feels strange and familiar, evoking both a sense of psychology dislocation in the viewer.

Huang Liyan places strong emphasis on the expression of perception and emotion. His works often carry a sense of drama and surrealism, rather than simply depicting reality. Instead, he reorganizes fragments of reality to imbue them with a hidden sense of narrative, creating a “spiritual ecological reality” that reflects both social and individual psychological states. This approach generates a fluidity between time and space, individual and collective, self and other, offering viewers multiple layers of experience in interpretation. His intense personal perspective and deep psychological insight further create a visual filled atmosphere with a sense of “awkward sincerity.”

Huang Liyan's works touch on themes of existentialism, social relationships, and individual consciousness. Through painting, he explores the absurdity, contradictions, and spiritual states present in everyday life, emphasizing how people are shaped by daily details and unconsciously influenced by their environment and society. His images are not merely static scenes, but visual reflections of the uncertainty of reality and inner emotions, allowing viewers to experience something both familiar and unsettling. His works draw us into a blurred, indefinable psychological theater, offering a seamless space for imagination.