A Shattered Visage Lies... (2025)

A Shattered Visage lies, a wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command, tell its sculptor well those passions read; which yet survive (2025)

Mineral pigment, animal glue on board. 204cm x 261cm x 3.5cm

The work employs three different “narrative scenes” (as is common in Asian folding screens) which told the story of three different nocturne plein-airs of three different times of night: twilight, 2am-dead of night and 5am pre-sunrise. Each scene set up to depict different physical and temporal locations yet designed to be read as one distinct landscape. The resulting image aimed to make viewers question their own lucidity, driven by an artist doing the same in the process of making the work.

The title is an edited excerpt of Ozymandias a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley which is understood to be a story on the fall of societies and leaders. The artist aimed to reinterpret its reading as a fall of the mental faculty, whereby the mind is the “King of Kings” who in its hubris fails to last forever.