Alicia Viebrock / YaYa Yajie Liang

Alicia Viebrock
Bellaboteurs

Alicia Viebrock (b. 1986, Munich, Germany) studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under Professor Herbert Brandl and lives and works in Vienna, Austria.

Alicia Viebrock’s paintings showcase simultaneous flickering and extinguishing, with movements and counter-movements in colour streams that flow or get stuck. Her works juxtapose exuberance with reduction, luminous ink with smeared colours, and soft washes with angular precision. On watery backgrounds, pastose events unfold, reminiscent of crystalline ice or exploding flowers in space. Viebrock’s process involves ping pong between irrationality and planning, creating unique interactions between ink and acrylic that generate different tensions.

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YaYa Yajie Liang
I’m similar, not similar to something, but just similar

YaYa Yajie Liang (b. 1995, Henan, China) has a BA Fine Art China Central Academy of Fine Arts (2018) and a MA Painting at Royal College of Art (2020). She is doing Ph.D. research at Royal College of Art since 2020.

Yaya Yajie Liang’s work explores the metamorphosis of the body and the potential of ‘becoming animal’. From the legendary banished beast to the interpenetration of biological space, Liang interrogates how men’s analogic mapping to and from animals (within imagined, lived, or taxonomic intimacies) helps us to reconsider the prescribed definition of ‘humanity’. Taking inspiration from Agential Realism, Liang views painting as a movement that is constantly repeating the ‘becoming’. Shifting restlessly between abstract and figurative modes, she uses improvisation to kick-start new paintings, allowing unplanned initial strokes to help dictate the works’ subsequent direction.