© LIU Shiyuan, For Jord (No. 1) 2020. Courtesy the artist, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles. — **© LIU Shiyuan,** *For Jord (No. 1)* 2020. Courtesy the artist, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles.

The Part Away - For Jord exhibition at the Tanya Bonakdar Gallery marks Liu Shiyuan’s first solo show in Los Angeles. The show focuses on Shiyuan’s film titled, “For the Photos I Didn’t Take, For the Stories I Didn’t Read” and three main photo works titled “Almost Like Rebar,” “For Jord,” and “Cross Away.” These works are comprised of a collection of images, grids, and colors that blend effortlessly from one to the next. Set in an overwhelmingly white room, the space seems to stand still as you are quietly drawn to each piece. The photographs stand alone on each wall in the room, centered by the white background, but when you step back, you are surrounded by all three. Looking at just one, you notice its distinct colors, the shapes created, and you become immersed in the story it tells, but the greater perspective reveals how they all connect to form the world that Shiyuan has created.

© LIU Shiyuan, For the Photos I Didn’t Take, For the Stories I Didn’t Read. 2020. Courtesy the artist, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles. — **© LIU Shiyuan,** *For the Photos I Didn’t Take, For the Stories I Didn’t Read.* 2020. Courtesy the artist, Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York / Los Angeles.

The images work together to place you in this imaginary realm. Shiyuan carefully crafted the compositions by combining photos found on the internet: images of animals, landscapes, and symbols. Shiyuan’s projects work as both investigations into color theory, as the images blend from one color to the next, and as studies of the complexity of symbols. The pieces break down images you may have seen before, a stock photo of a duck, waves, tree branches — nothing out of the ordinary meets the eye at first glance. But when you combine them, one begins to see each individual image’s role in the community created by the work. Similarly to how we as individuals often only think of only ourselves, every now and again we see the bigger picture and realize the small role we play in a larger context.

The film, displayed in its own darkened room, is a series of image stills rather than a fluid sequence of scenes. Once again, Shiyuan uses images found on the internet, stock photos of the Earth, aliens, books, fire, and snow, which are strung together to create a scene. The images are aligned in a row, touching in a continuous line. Each scene is paired with a quote, a line from “The Little Match Seller.” The quotes are written out in distinct fonts; this physical text, just like a book, demands that the viewer read and digest the story rather than simply hear and forget it.

What makes this film so unique is the atmosphere created for each individual’s interpretation. Inspired by the book “The Little Match Seller,” Shiyuan searched the internet, word by word, to find images to match every single word in the text. Using these vague or familiar images, the film allows the viewer, an outsider, to create their own narrative of the photos and, therefore, the film itself. Although the individual pictures are up for interpretation by the outsiders of Shiyuan’s world, the film emerges as a collective contemplation of capitalism, individualism, inequality, and extravagance.

Liu Shiyuan’s show at the Tanya Bonakdar Gallery opened on November 14th and is available to view with a reservation until January 31st, 2021.