FIELDS OF FLOW WHERE QI MOVES: IN CONVERSATION WITH CELS 細胞

What runs through all of them is Qi (氣,not to be confused with “aura”) as described in Chinese medicine. For me, it’s similar to what hip-hop culture calls flow, but Qi also includes the relationships between body and nature, the connection between “me” and the environment.

No matter what the medium is, I try to capture a field of flow where Qi moves, an energetic field being condensed into form. Even my kinetic works are about shaping this kind of looped state.

“Material life” is a very good question. Some artists, like Ivana Bašić, can directly sense the vitality of matter itself. In one interview she said, “These materials are the truth.” Compared to resin or plastic, she feels that glass or stone are closer to the truth of life. To perceive that vibration of life through material is a remarkable talent, but I rely on a different path to approach life.

Rather than searching for vitality within material, I imagine the movement of Qi. In Chinese medicine, life arises when Qi circulates. For me, form is not made, it condenses through Qi; when Qi disperses, the form loosens. The alternation between density and release keeps Qi in motion.

My three-dimensional works are therefore more like “three-dimensional paintings.” Three-dimensionality is not simply an expansion from surface to space, but the materialization of the energy and rhythm that once existed in the pictorial field. Material only supports this flow, without the condensation of Qi, it is merely a corpse.

Just as “logic” must be materialized through language, whether programming or philosophy, the materialization of Qi appears in forms that carry bodily sensation. These shapes are traces left by the movement of air, extensions of bodily impressions.

Before I encountered art, I began with graffiti. Many might see them as the same, but for me they belong to different realms: graffiti acts on instinct and intuition, while art is a system of knowledge that requires reflection and method. The two are not opposed but cyclical. I want to think about graffiti through art, and to practice art through the raw drive of graffiti.

So I call my practice extended thoughts on graffiti as a self-reminder: let intuition and reflection coexist, and resist falling into any habitual system. Even graffiti, which seems rebellious and free, has its hidden rules and grammar, and it’s precisely that tension that continues to attract me.

These forms exist within a non-linear time, or perhaps a state beyond time itself. To me they are in a constant process of becoming, fields where form is momentarily condensed within flow.

When I think about the relationship between body and Qi, I focus not on temporal position but on a motion that transcends time. Like how Ryoji Ikeda speaks of the “continuum” between data and the universe, or how Deleuze describes the fold (le pli): no beginning, no end, only the perpetual unfolding and refolding of energy.

It was a long-term commission from the hotpot restaurant “Yü’s Good Food” in Taichung. They offered full freedom in theme and medium, so I began from the nature of hotpot itself, it’s a site of intense energy transformation: the boiling broth, the bursting bubbles, convection flipping the ingredients, liquid turning into vapor, heat changing color and texture, and finally food entering the body as energy.

The works revolve around these processes of transformation. “The Cosmic Broth” imagines an endlessly simmering pot like the universe itself, particles in constant reaction. Behind it stands “Rising Breathe”, a vertical moving canvas symbolizing the rising of steam, and beside it “Thermal Morphology”, a shape mutating within its own boiling state.

For me, movement opens another dimension of perception. When the form begins to move, the relation between viewer and work shifts, the control returns to the piece itself. It starts to breathe and find its own rhythm. I’m more interested in this continuous state of being than in simply making an object move.

Perhaps it’s because I’ve always focused on “vitality,” and tried to step away from human emotions, that the works carry a calmness similar to Buddhist statues. Buddha figures are fascinating, they resemble humans yet are not human; they are too serene, too peaceful. I have no religious belief, but I’m drawn to that tranquility. Maybe unconsciously I’ve transferred this longing for peace into the works themselves. Art-making, to me, has always felt like a form of spiritual practice.

I really like this question; I never thought of it that way before. In retrospect, you’re right, it seems I am, like Japanese culture, trying to insert a sense of ritual into this era of information overload.

This makes me think of my sculptural works as “icons” in another sense, not religious symbols, but presences that bring inner stillness. That quality of quiet energy is something pursue; it reminds me of Mark Rothko’s paintings: silent yet full of force.

If one graffiti writer’s name is re-tagged by another, who owns the mark? If an employee invents something new, does authorship belong to the individual or the corporation?

We already live in a society that values the common good more than personal aura. My studio, though small, is built with that structure in mind. Creation today depends on collaboration, between humans, tools, and software. What matters to me isn’t authorship but whether the system continues to breathe.

If I had to describe it, I’d say I’m more like a conductor, the orchestra and the conductor exist in symbiosis, sharing rhythm rather than hierarchy.

They were actually temporary body paints, not real tattoos. Before making sculptural works, I had already started painting on different three-dimensional surfaces, ceramics, bodies, cakes, clothes. I was searching for interesting “supports” that could bring me closer to understanding flow. I found the human body most fascinating because I painted freestyle, improvising while observing subtle muscular movements. Those lines guided my composition, the forms seemed to “grow” from the body itself.

It was also my first time observing the body so sensitively. I used to paint at street stalls, each piece finished in about twenty minutes, leaving no time for planning. Over time I trained a kind of blank gaze, eyes slightly unfocused, like when one stares into distant scenery. It allowed me to capture overall structure before detail, almost instinctively.

So yes it’s a part of my artistic practice, yet it’s more accurate to say that I was graffiti-ing on skin. Many people asked to tattoo my designs, but I couldn’t draw them without the living muscles, they aren’t just images but states of flow. Tattooing, conceptually, also conflicts with graffiti: graffiti is destined to vanish; once the writer leaves, the wall belongs to the street again. That ephemerality gives it life. I prefer coexistence with nature over the desire for permanence.

When painting on bodies no longer satisfied my spatial imagination, I began making the three-dimensional works you see now, paintings that became volumetric.

Recently I’ve been organizing my creative trajectory. Through writing my thesis I’m trying to understand my intuition more deeply, to clarify directions for future work. Building a more accurate system feels like a form of respect for the works themselves, it allows me to look at my own visual language from another perspective.

My studio is also producing some commissioned projects, including a large scale installation for a new music venue and a wearable sculpture for an influencer. These projects continue my exploration of Qi in different forms and flows.

Lately I’ve become interested in the concept of the time crystal. Normally, matter at its lowest-energy state reaches dynamic equilibrium, yet a time crystal keeps oscillating, it maintains motion at minimal energy. Scientists consider this zero energy oscillation ideal for calibrating time, such as in GPS communication, and for quantum-computing data storage.

To me, this endless, self-generating rhythm echoes what I’ve been exploring in kinetic sculpture. I haven’t studied it deeply yet, but it might become an entry point for thinking about the relationship between Qi and time.