Form

2.1
3D, 2D, and Traditional Fine Art

Andy Chen I haven’t been creating for very long. I started out drawing geometric shapes, tried using photography as a medium, and even experimented with clay at one point. I really love the unpredictability of physical materials—but that also makes it hard to precisely control symbols or work with subtle ideas. Digital tools, on the other hand, let me capture much finer perspectives.

The material I shoot feels like a series of fragments to me. Maybe it's because my shooting method highlights that sense of fragmentation. As a result, the outcome often feels a bit “patched together.” With 3D tools, though, it’s more like a tactile reassembly—like running your hand over a surface. As your way of touching changes, so does the object’s form. It’s never quite fixed.

LIU Yu-Ju My process is driven by sound and music—I use them to get into a particular state of mind. My mood at that moment affects how I create and even how my body moves. A brushstroke done on instinct, just a quick flick of the wrist, often best reflects how I’m feeling. With painting, I feel like I can express myself freely. Digital tools sometimes couldn’t reflect these moments directly.

Yaode JN That approach is very close to traditional fine art. Classical training tends to emphasise the relationship between medium and the body.

Andy Chen But in your work, we can sense both the texture of digital rendering and the touch of something hand-drawn. How do you strike that balance—whether it’s an intentional choice during the process, or how you expect viewers to read the finished piece?

PENG Hsing-Kai Yeah, I’ve wondered that too. I always assumed you were working digitally—until you once accidentally sent me a photo that hadn’t been cropped, and I realised the whole piece was actually painted with acrylics. I was honestly a bit stunned.

LIU Yu-Ju I’ve never deliberately tried to balance mediums. When I get the urge to make something, I just use whatever’s on hand. I’m studying in Melbourne right now, so for this exhibition, I had to improvise. I picked up plants outside, looked for salt in the kitchen, even rummaged through storage for usable materials. I don’t want my work to be easily identifiable by medium—I want its texture to remain ambiguous. That’s something I’m consciously managing.

PENG Hsing-Kai People can only create within the limits of their sensory perception. Maybe 3D tools are the best medium for fully realising a creator’s worldview—without directly interfering with the brain. Chris Cunningham’s 1999 music video for Björk’s All is Full of Love still doesn’t feel outdated today.

Andy Chen Using geometric lines used to make me feel boxed in—like I was stuck in a rigid structure. I was trying to find the “qi” in lines, but looking back, I’m not sure I fully subscribe to that traditional East Asian view anymore. So I started exploring “surfaces” instead. Working with 3D tools feels more like a process than a static outcome. Even back when I used geometric forms, I was more drawn to an unsettled coexistence of shapes, textures and elements, rather than tidy edges and clean surfaces.

That said, if I find myself really averse to certain elements, it usually means there’s something unresolved about them for me. So although I often switch up my methods, some elements get thrown out, while others come back in new ways. It’s like unlocking a new map in a game—new materials shift my entire thought process, even if the essence of my work stays the same.

In that sense, I think “lines” are still something I want to hold onto—not just as visual elements, but for their sharpness, clarity, and emotional weight. At the same time, I want to preserve softness too—fine structures visible at the micro level, or a certain inner, almost spiritual, state of being.

2.2
Distilling Symbols

PENG Hsing-Kai Yaode, your commissioned design work leans towards low-saturation tones and spatial oddness, whereas your personal projects favour realistic lighting, texture, and strict perspective. Why do you intentionally separate the two?

Yaode JN When working on commissions, my goal is to build brand identities for clients. Like the pink for Manbo Key (楊登棋), or the black square for WANG Hsiang-Lin (王湘靈)—those colours, shapes, signals are meant to become long-term symbols that the artists can use to communicate with the outside world.

That said, some projects only allow subtraction, or I can only offer conceptual direction. I can’t always steer the result. Some projects fail outright, and the successful ones often depend on the artist’s personality, their content, my mental state at the time, or practical constraints. Artists themselves are symbol-makers. So the “design” side has a clear framework, and I use it as a way to help audiences enter the artist’s world.

PENG Hsing-Kai That’s a very contemporary approach to symbol-making. Contemporary branding is different from modernist branding—it's not about designing a logo and telling people to adhere to some abstract value system. Like the green Daniel Lee picked for Bottega Veneta, or the knight blue he used for Burberry—it’s impressive and a bit baffling, like these colours always belonged to the brand, but no one had noticed before. That kind of process helps clients recognise their core identity. I think it’s one of the more effective ways to build a brand today.

It’s like Barthes' punctum and aura in photography—William Eggleston focuses on things with unspeakable metaphoric angles. Or like the “backrooms” you mentioned earlier—when something ordinary triggers a feeling that’s eerie, unsettling, surreal. Or take Miller’s by Hubertus Design for example—the Miller’s, Image campaign 18/19 trains the viewer to sense the strange within the everyday. Your design seems to distil all those unspeakable, chaotic parts into something concrete, so the viewer can tune into a consistent state that brings them closer to the artist’s performance.

Yaode JN That’s definitely a more concept-driven design approach. As a contrast, when I do visuals for Pawnshop or Homo Pleasure, those clients tend to adopt my—or other designers’—personal creative methods. Projects like those give me far more freedom, so I can approach them with a creative mindset, rather than thinking in terms of “design should serve a purpose.” We don’t have to plan their function or overly control whether they meet a specific need. Instead, we just let the visuals evolve naturally—just enough to do their job.

PENG Hsing-Kai Designing for Pawnshop feels a bit like “authorial participation”—like you’re hinting that “the designer will be there dancing too.” The purpose of party visuals is straightforward: to let people intuitively sense that something exciting is about to happen. That simplicity makes the execution much more open and adaptable, allowing it to accommodate a range of creators’ styles.

Yaode JN Even though the visual styles for Pawnshop aren’t completely unified, their identity remains strong. When a designer joins the project, it’s already a form of selection—the consistency actually comes from the client’s taste and filtering. As long as we stay within the basic framework of “visuals made on top of joy,” then the creator’s personal voice and approach become welcome, organic elements.

2.3
Defocusing

Yaode JN Visual design usually highlights or defines a focal subject. But in your work, the foreground and background often blur into each other—or even violently strip the material of its original meaning. I know you’ve got a narrative method called “defocusing,” but beyond the theoretical layer, I’m curious: emotionally, what draws you to this kind of treatment?

PENG Hsing-Kai Focal techniques have been thoroughly explored in art history. There’s hardly anything left in that realm that still excites me. If a piece doesn’t feel like it contributes something to history, I genuinely feel nothing. So I’ve resorted to elimination—trying to find a path forward by removing things from the visual experience. I know this is how I separate commercial work from cultural missions. But I refuse to let my talents be reduced to momentary commercial highs.

I think life, at its core, is melancholic. The world’s full of things we can’t control. Deep down, I fear that all of it—everything we do—might end up being meaningless. I want my work to help people realise that. You could call it nihilism, sure. Because in my own life, every single thing I once believed was important... eventually turned out not to be. I expect my clients to share that mindset. So I deliberately destroy what they think is important, forcing them to experience a kind of self-collapse.

Yaode JN That sounds absolutely unhinged.

PENG Hsing-Kai I won’t deny it. But the strange thing is—the final result always ends up feeling more meaningful than anyone expected. But where does that feeling come from? No one knows. It’s just my style. Maybe it’s only through destruction that we can actually reach something new—see what truly matters. You have to self-destruct before you can be reborn.

That series of Sunrise Department Store (中興百貨) ads from the ’90s had a big influence on me—“Only through self-destruction can one attain eternal life.” (自毀才得永生) I think that phrase may well be the foundation of my entire methodology.