Shijia Luo
[Los Angeles, United States]
Art Yourself Atelier is pleased to present 『You, Through Me』, a distinctive online solo exhibition showcasing the profound artistic innovation of Shijia Luo, an ascending artist based in Los Angeles.
Artist's Biography
Currently based in Los Angeles, with an experience encompassing Chengdu, Sydney, London, Beijing, and San Francisco, Shijia (a.k.a Bella), as a versatile visual designer and artist proficient in both 2D and 3D forms, leverages her multi-disciplinary expertise to focus on visual expression as a tool for meaningful discourse and storytelling. Her adeptness extends across various mediums, including print and digital, where she finds immense satisfaction as a potent conduit for self-expression and communication.
About the Solo Exhibition
"You, Through Me" encapsulates a comprehensive interpretation, inviting diverse perspectives akin to any world-building endeavor. It explores the future, artifacts, and sensory encounters—originally
conceived as a fusion of High Tech and Bad Romance. The narrative, rooted in Shijia's vision of intense technological progress and complex emotions, evolved from a hastily scribbled story during her time
of isolation in Shanghai, 2021, into Sym Oasis 2060, fully realized with characters, artifacts, and scene intricacies.
Keiichi Matsuda's Hyperreality significantly influences Shijia's creation of an experiential image, particularly the concept of a virtual system providing real information to the physical scene. This
inspired her to explore the complete separation of the physical and virtual realms. For example, they need to sit on the sofa to rest, and they need a bed to sleep. But without access to the system, everything is just an empty shell.
Damien Hirst's visually striking and controversial artworks, notably "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living," provided a compelling contrast,
emphasizing “The Physical Impossibility of Presence in the Mind of Someone Absent”.
The work is born from Shijia's personal experience, where conflict arises as her thoughts, recognition, and emotional connections trigger an emotional overload and brain shutdown. This concept stems from
a period when her emotions disrupted her ability to think clearly. Reflecting on this, Shijia pondered the uniqueness of human memory, perception, and emotions compared to technology. The narrative also
draws from her experience during the 2021 quarantine in Shanghai, where she contemplated a story to alleviate physical and mental strain. It envisions a future with brain-computer interfaces and
consciousness transfer, exploring the remote sharing of human activities through chip sensory technology.
In shaping the future world Shijia envisioned, she faced challenges to create visual effects compared to artists like Hyperreality who utilized photography and post-production synthesis. Constructing a
glimpse of the future world demands an extensive amount of visual design, from the world onboarding to the climactic disagreement between 'I' and Mr. Z, where 'I' begins sharing the visual experience in
'my' mind. Notably, the rapid advancements in artificial intelligence during her creative journey allowed Midjourney to generate visual associations based on the exhibition artwork. This mirrors the
story's metaphor that the visual associations conveyed by “me” are akin to artificial intelligence's production under prompt materials, highlighting the entangled relationship between humans and
artifacts.
Her Past Exhibition Experience
2024 · Maryland, U.S.
Maryland Federation of Art (MFA) · Digital Directions (Group Exhibition)
2024 · Los Angeles, U.S.
Gong Gallery · TWHAWHIF (Group Exhibition)
2024 · Los Angeles, U.S.
4C Gallery · You, Through Me (Solo Show)
2024 · Dresden, Germany
Omnibus Gallery · the Virtual 3D Video Art Festival (Group Exhibition)
2023 · San Francisco, U.S.
San Francisco Art Book Fair (SFABF)
Her Study Experience
California College of the Arts
Master of Fine Arts, San Francisco
September 2020 - May 2023