In love with Pixy Liao

Thanks to Leo Xu for today’s find…Shanghai-born, Brooklyn-based photographer Yijun (Pixy) Liao. The more I wrote this blog post the more I fell in love with her entity as you’ll discover. Her practice examines intimate relationships through photographic works laced with crisp colour clarity and opaque identity, visual humour, partial aggressive control, visionary voyeurism, a pinch of the sexual-crude, frozen emotional tensions and lucid real-life encounters.

Shown here are two projects…both involving her boyfriend Moro. The first is her new series, ‘For Your Eyes Only’ (2012- ), which is part of the forthcoming exhibition ‘Three’ curated by Elizabeth Biondi at the Hagedorn Foundation Gallery in Atlanta opening 9 January to 12 March 2014.

“‘For Your Eyes Only’ is a visual love letter to an intimate lover. I am interested in the mundane life, in finding things and making fun of it, liberating it from what it is. This project is a combination of daily life and performance with a naughty of daily life and performance with a naughty attitude.” – Pixy Liao

'Nipple Kiss' (2013) by Pixy Liao, c-print — ‘Nipple Kiss’ (2013) by Pixy Liao, c-print

'Fog' (2012) by Pixy Liao, c-print — ‘Fog’ (2012) by Pixy Liao, c-print

'Grace' (2013) by Pixy Liao, c-print — ‘Grace’ (2013) by Pixy Liao, c-print

'Ping Pong Balls' (2013) by Pixy Liao, c-print — ‘Ping Pong Balls’ (2013) by Pixy Liao, c-print

'A-cup' (2013) by Pixy Liao, c-print — ‘A-cup’ (2013) by Pixy Liao, c-print

'Poke' (2012) by Pixy Liao, c-print — ‘Poke’ (2012) by Pixy Liao, c-print

'Play Station' (2013) by Pixy Liao, c-print — ‘Play Station’ (2013) by Pixy Liao, c-print

The other series shown here is ‘Experimental Relationships’…again dealing with similar themes as above, but with a different emotional clarity as the subjects, the people, are viewed in their entirety rather than in select unidentifiable fragments of moments, of encounters. Here, we see Pixy together with Moro. We voyeuristically watch and read the development of their new intimate relationship as if prying into the artist’s diary. In part, we can immediately associate with the situations we are confronted with…laugh at their (sushi) playful, get-to-know-you absurdity, understand the want for longed embrace with a chemical connection like no other, the purity of nakedness and saying nothing, and that feeling like nothing else matters as you get lost in each other.

Whilst writing this I’ve been listening to Pixy and Moro’s indie toy rock band called PIMO that has me smiling…specifically the track ‘Wanna Be a Tuna’ taken from their album Pimopera as shown below…a beautiful animation by Ryo Inoue. Tuesday smiles, actually they’re a running trend in 2014…