Research Work

Before the jade, the surface — and the strange pull to touch it.
A woman with glasses, grey hoodie, and grey pants carrying plush toys, stands in front of a white gallery wall with three paintings, including a still life of tomatoes, a portrait of a lobster, and a landscape of trees or mountains.

This body of earlier work treats the painting less as an image than as an object — a surface in dialogue with the wall and the room around it.

Built in thin white relief, prepared in gesso and acrylic, these pale, neutral planes hold a minute topography: a trompe-l'œil of contact, something the eye wants to reach for.

They become places where things settle — advertising, the smoothness of the screen, the aesthetics of the algorithm, the decorative — and quietly ask how those regimes organise what we see and what we value. Working from digital collages toward carved, sedimented surfaces, pigment often laid down with cosmetic brushes, the practice stages the friction between handmade matter and digital image.

It is research in the literal sense: the ground from which the later, more personal work would grow — out of one question, how can a painting touch not only through its idea, but through what it physically holds?

Grid
Feishan HSIEH Feishan HSIEH

Grid

The Winged Victory, run through a beauty filter until she's neither ancient nor modern — just uncanny. The title traces a word that drifted from the German was ist das? ("what is that?") into the French for a small window: proof that meaning slips, and something new grows in the gap.

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Vasisdas
Feishan HSIEH Feishan HSIEH

Vasisdas

The Winged Victory, run through a beauty filter until she's neither ancient nor modern — just uncanny. The title traces a word that drifted from the German was ist das? ("what is that?") into the French for a small window: proof that meaning slips, and something new grows in the gap.

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Positive Thinking
Feishan HSIEH Feishan HSIEH

Positive Thinking

Be clear, be confident, and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now.

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Apple Deception
Feishan HSIEH Feishan HSIEH

Apple Deception

Apple, tomato, or digital filter? A still life run through the same enhancement that smooths everything on a screen — until you can't tell what's fruit and what's been added. The clarity, it turns out, was manufactured.

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Pearl and Its Deformation
Feishan HSIEH Feishan HSIEH

Pearl and Its Deformation

A cratered moon and a cultivated pearl, caught mistaking each other for value. Formed through irritation, prized for rarity — until the jewel loosens into pure landscape, and worth stops being obvious.

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