Artist Statement: The Echo Chamber Project

Introduction: 

Dutch Golden Age Still Life, Vanitas, and Genre Painting

Symbols intersect with spoken language in their capacity to convey information. Their visual recognizability enables them to articulate complex concepts, yet the boundary between symbols and images in painting remains ambiguous. 

Not all images with implied meanings qualify as symbols. For instance, a lemon in a Dutch Golden Age still life may signify the commissioner’s wealth, but it does not become a symbol because it is contextualized within a dining scene alongside silverware and glassware. Here, the lemon shares the same mission as other objects: to profile the opulence of their owner.  

In contrast, the skull in a vanitas still life operates differently. Nestled among books, oil lamps, and quills, it emerges as an envoy of death, silently perched atop a book to declare the demise of all material things. Its relationship to other objects is not collaborative but judicial. Though rendered in the same style as surrounding items, the skull stands isolated, its oppositional stance elevating it beyond mere representation—unlike the lemon.  

This analysis, however, risks circular reasoning. My interpretation of the vanitas skull presupposes its association with death, which in turn shapes how I perceive its relational dynamics within the composition. Essentially, I argue that the skull is a symbol because it is a symbol.  

Yet why is the skull a symbol? Does its symbolic nature dictate its relationship to other objects, or vice versa? This chicken-or-egg dilemma deepens when comparing the vanitas skull to a skeletal diagram in an anatomy textbook. The latter carries no symbolic weight. How can the same image—a skull—hold profound meaning in one context yet remain neutral in another? Does context truly determine an object’s symbolic status?  

Paradoxically, in vanitas painting, the skull itself defines the context as vanitas, creating a self-reinforcing loop: the symbol dictates the context, which then amplifies the symbol’s authority. How do we enter this Möbius strip of meaning? Our instantaneous recognition of symbols stems from conditioned knowledge—a feedback loop of cultural literacy. Artists wield symbols with unwavering trust in their utility, while viewers armed with the equation “skull = death” engage the work accordingly. However, a child, devoid of this associative framework, would interpret the same painting naively.  

Thus, symbols exist not solely within the painting but within the broader realms of culture and history. Their potency is forged through repeated use, accruing layers of meaning like linguistic signs that must be learned. Once we accept the “skull = death” equation and recognize its placement within a meaning-hungry context, the skull transcends imagehood to become a symbol.  

This inquiry reveals multiple relational dynamics. The interplay between symbol and image resembles overlapping spheres in a Venn diagram, while the bond between symbol and context resembles a dynamic power struggle—a mutual shaping, mirroring, contesting, and reinforcing. Additionally, when multiple symbols coexist in a painting, they interact dialectically. In Vermeer’s A Maid Asleep, the presence of Cupid’s portrait on the wall steers our interpretation of the disheveled tablecloth and wine, thereby reframing the entire narrative.  

This project investigates how symbols operate in painting by manipulating three intertwining relationships—symbol-image, symbol-context, and symbol-symbol—pushing them to their limits to test their possibilities. I title this project Echo Chamber, for the interplay of symbols resonates like a self-amplifying vibration. 

Methodologies: harmonize images with formal decisions 

When I encountered Paula Siebra’s works in her show The Earliest Things, I was immediately captivated. Her still life paintings are not merely depictions of objects situated in space—there is something more profound at play. I sense the artist’s intense focus on the objects, yet what she seeks to uncover does not stem from the material being of the object itself, but rather something associated with it yet floating above its form, perhaps a memory imbued with warmth or a cultural aura.  

Her still lifes lack defined shadows, their edges blurred. Both the objects and the space they inhabit are rendered through gentle, short brushstrokes and subtle tinted colors. The underpainting unifies the composition with a warm tonal harmony. This reveals that the objects’ presence in space is not anchored in their volumetric mass or spatial depth, but in their chromatic coherence. Simultaneously, this suppression of pictorial depth manifests in the diminished perspective. The plane the objects occupy visually resolves into a central rectangular frame that encloses the object. For example, in one painting, Paula depicted an apple placed on a piece of paper: while harmonizing chromatically with its surroundings, the distorted perspective of the table top makes it appear to hover at the center of the canvas. Besides the central placement, Paula’s rendering of the apple directs our attention to its shape and color rather than its volume, allowing it to transcend physicality and become a sign.  

Paula achieves a delicate balance where her still lifes exist between materiality and symbolism through simple yet potent artistic decisions. Her paintings possess a refined simplicity—not just in their clarity formally, but in their conceptual distillation. Because of this simplicity, we can more directly sense the effectiveness of her methods, and acutely perceive what her paintings accomplish. The relationship between object and context remains in constant flux. At first glance, objects seem embedded within their settings, providing narrative grounding. Yet upon prolonged viewing, they detach from the context to emerge as vessels of complex ideas and emotions.  

Paula’s work has profoundly influenced me. They revealed to me that image, symbol and context do not exist in a hierarchical relationship. Instead, they mutually shape and influence one another. Through painterly decisions, symbols are liberated from narrative constraints, becoming not just a device, but the idea itself. Paula’s paintings showed the possibility that even without detaching from narrative, symbols can float above it, becoming extractable entities open to independent contemplation.

REFRAIN, Acrylic on Canvas, 36”X72”

Symbol-Context relationship: To what extent can painting render identical images to create divergent visual interpretations via distinct painterly approaches?

In the painting REFRAIN, I tried to amplify the effect of symbols using repetition. The most eye-catching element in the composition is the orderly row of wine glasses in the foreground. These glasses lack shadows and appear relatively graphic, making the bar counter they rest upon erect like a sign board. Behind this plane, the orange-yellow atmosphere creates a contrasting effect of enhanced depth through color differentiation. The black wine glasses possess a more volumetric quality than the bar yet appear weightlessly suspended in air. This contrasts with the foreground glasses, which, while flatter in representation, remain subject to gravitation through subtle visual cues such as the dripping of paint.

In the foreground, the variously posed hands grasping wine glasses suggest different people enjoying their beverages. However, the serial arrangement of identical glass shapes allows them to shed their subjectivity to become icons. The middle-ground glasses achieve a different effect, manifesting motion and temporal progression through sequential variations, akin to frame-by-frame animation. Their chromatic consistency suggests "different states of the same object," thereby encouraging us to perceive them as one object in motion. Besides that, the moon hovering in the background, the green mountain that gradually transforms into foliage and the wood with growth rings that flow horizontally all provide directions for interpretation. The orange ground could be a resemblance of the golden hour, a time situated between day and night. Moon Phases and annual rings of trees are both indicative of passage of time. The transformation of the green creates different figure-ground relationships for each cup and make them interact with the space around them in different ways

Though both groups of glasses employ repetition, their distinct painterly treatments produce divergent effects. The middle-ground glasses demonstrate temporal continuity of a singular subject, while the foreground arrangement reveals the diminishment of subjectivity through replication - a process of flattening individual identity into collective units within a larger configuration. When these two sets of repetitive images are juxtaposed with each other, we can see how easily the effect of the same object can be altered through the way paint is applied, in other words, in the context of painting.

Shadow Puppet 03: Man, Acrylic on Linen, 38”X46”

Symbol-symbol relationship: an endless spiral of cumulative meaning

This 38x46-inch painting is divided into upper and lower sections. Every nameable element in the composition harbors symbolic potential—objects share formal similarities while differing in meaning, akin to homophones. The recurring profile motif appears multiple times. Typically, when a figure appears in a painting, it inevitably draws attention to itself. Yet through repetitive iteration, like Andy Warhol’s silkscreened Marilyn Monroes, these forms shed their individuality and subjectivity, becoming pure symbols.  

The space they inhabit provides no definitive context—no clear objects, narratives, or traditional genres to anchor their purpose, leaving interpretation open. Despite their semantic ambiguity, their visual kinship weaves connective threads. Viewers may thus forge associations and construct plausible narratives from these symbols. Below are interpretations gathered from diverse perspectives:  

The Feminist Perspective:

The prominently rendered hands exude masculine strength, yet the male silhouette behind them casts doubt on his actual presence. This figure could be either a shadow puppet projected by the hands onto the curtain or a man concealed behind it—both readings hold validity given the ambiguous light source (foreground illumination vs. background window). This liminal state between presence and absence embodies freedom granted by those value-producing hands. In contrast, the veiled female figure, though physically present, exists anonymously—her true visage obscured, reduced to a silhouette. Before her rests an immaculate vessel: flawless, curvaceous, and objectified, mirroring her own anonymized form. This juxtaposition suggests a "Trophy Wife" trapped in patriarchal objectification, while her "groom" luxuriates in autonomy—a critique of gendered power dynamics.  

Substance/Illusion & Life/Death Perspectives:

For Chinese millennials, the ivy leaf inevitably evokes O. Henry’s The Last Leaf, a story ingrained through elementary school textbooks. In the tale, a young female artist, dying of pneumonia, believes her life hinges on the last ivy leaf outside her window. An elderly male painter secretly paints a lifelike leaf on the wall during a storm, saving her hope, and life, at the cost of his own.  

The ivy at the painting’s base is rendered half in vivid green, half in burnt umber underpainting on raw linen. Its drop shadow creates an illusion of floating, yet the exposed underpainting demystifies its artifice—a deconstruction of trompe l’oeil traditions. By revealing its making, the work simultaneously constructs and destabilizes illusion. This hyperreal leaf further contrasts with the loosely painted foliage outside the window on the upper right, deepening the dialectic of representation.  

If read as half-living/half-dead, the leaf becomes a liminal symbol. When projected onto the veiled figure, it transforms her into a ghost. The act of draping cloth—whether shrouding or performing "ghostliness"—erases humanity while retaining vague anthropomorphism. What lies beneath the cloth? Air? Darkness? A living body in costume? Like Schrödinger’s cat, the uncertainty itself becomes the point. The ghost’s counterpart—the ambiguous male shadow that could either be a hand puppet or a hidden man—exists in equally indeterminate space, its location contingent on the viewer’s gaze. Elements throughout (leaves, shadows, the Rubin Vase illusion) occupy thresholds between reality and illusion, mirroring painting’s ontological paradox: a flat object that simulates depth, crafts fiction, and commands belief.  

The Historical Perspective:

The veiled woman’s profile nods to Magritte’s The Lovers, where draped figures and grapevines (symbols of fertility/romance) suggest clandestine desire. Yet the hands here expose the male as mere shadow-play, invoking Plato’s Cave allegory to interrogate art’s relationship to truth.  

Self-Reflexivity & Viewer Agency:

All interpretations, however divergent, coalesce into a web of meanings I never consciously engineered. During creation, I prioritized formal harmony, yet viewers’ narratives emerge from uncharted angles. These symbols form a chain of signification, looping within the stretcher bars’ confines to create hermeneutic closure—every reading finds internal logic.  

Like much modern art, this work embodies painting’s self-reflexivity: its capacity to interrogate its own materiality, processes, and essence. Some artists, like de Kooning or Pollock, emphasize pigment-as-substance to shatter the "window illusion." Others, like Magritte in The Treachery of Images (with its "Ceci n’est pas une pipe" text), rupture illusion through cognitive dissonance.  

Yet this painting diverges. Unlike Magritte’s abrupt wake-up call ("This is not a pipe"), it lures viewers into a seamless loop of signification. The visual likeness of symbols camouflages semiotic arbitrariness; the exit door remains unmarked. Only through prolonged scrutiny might one notice the humble warm gray is actually raw linen.

Here, disillusionment becomes a choice, not a mandate. The painting grants viewers autonomy—they are the primal force, the "original voice" that animates its echoes.  

Ultimately, the work’s logic resides not in pigment or canvas, but in the cultural-semiotic systems each viewer brings. Its true locus extends beyond the stretcher bars, thrives in the dialogue between the object and the observer.

Olive 01, Acrylic on Linen, 4”X4”; Olive 02, Acrylic on Linen, 5”X7”; Olive 03, Acrylic on Linen, 5”X5”; Olive 04, Acrylic on Linen, 7”X7”

Symbol-image relationship: Trompe-l'œil

Trompe-l'œil (French for "deceive the eye") is an artistic technique that employs hyper-realistic painting methods to create visual illusions. Through precise perspective, lighting, and meticulous detailing, it renders two-dimensional surfaces with three-dimensional verisimilitude, often tricking viewers into mistaking painted objects for tangible entities. Across both Eastern and Western traditions, artists have pursued "truth" in painting—whether through representational fidelity or spiritual vitality.

Pliny the Elder’s Natural History records the legendary painting duel between the ancient Greek artists Zeuxis and Parrhasius. Zeuxis painted grapes so lifelike that birds flew down to peck at them, impressing viewers with his mastery of naturalistic imitation. Parrhasius then presented his work: a curtain so convincingly rendered that Zeuxis reached to pull it aside, only to discover it was painted. Zeuxis conceded defeat, declaring: "I deceived birds, but Parrhasius deceived the artist."

In China, exceptional paintings are praised as “栩栩如生” (vivid enough to come alive). The idiom “画龙点睛” ("dotting the dragon’s eyes") originates from the story of Zhang Sengyou, who painted four dragons on the walls of Anle Temple but left their eyes blank. When pressured to complete them, he added pupils to two dragons, which promptly tore through the walls and ascended to heaven on thunderclouds. Here, "truth" transcends mere likeness, embodying the vitality, 气韵 (spiritual resonance), and emotive power of the subject—akin to Heidegger’s concept of the “thing’s thingness”. Paula Siebra’s still lifes achieve this essence, surpassing superficial appearances to capture spiritual or ontological truth, much like Van Gogh’s shoes or Phoebe Helander’s oranges.

I argue that trompe-l’œil aligns more with the Greek tradition—a grand visual deception. Masters like Samuel van Hoogstraten and William Harnett were illusionist-sorcerers who mastered optics to bewitch human perception.

To participate in this diaspora of painting and illusion, I created these olive paintings. 

Unlike human profiles, olives carry little inherent symbolic weight. When depicted, formal execution dominates interpretation. The olive’s simplicity—a small oval—becomes the painting’s sole protagonist and contextual anchor. Thus, reading these works hinges entirely on the olive’s representation.

Formally, their link to trompe-l’œil lies in the precise detailing, while subverting other conventions. Shadows, crucial to trompe-l’œil’s spatial gravity, are manipulated here to overthrow the conventions. Inconsistent shadow directions relative to implied light sources shatter illusion: some olives appear embedded in exposed linen, others float in non-spaces or assume aerial perspectives. Their placements evoke graphic design, each olive a punctual mark on rectangular canvases.

Symbolically, olives—as economic staples—evoke Greek culture. They also reference artistic pedagogy: painting an olive trains one to render female heads. This positions the olive as a meta-painting metaphor.

The Olive Series both adheres to and rebels against trompe-l’œil, transforming the viewing experience. What does a "failed" anti-illusionistic trompe-l’œil signify? Here, failure shifts visual truth toward ontological truth—not of the depicted object, but of the artwork’s existential mode. The olive and exposed linen jointly metaphorize painting itself. Though lacking explicit symbolism, the olive’s specific formal dialogue with trompe-l’œil becomes indispensable to the work’s symbolic machinery. Because the olive became an impoverished, blank signifier, the basic elements of illusion, figure-ground dynamics, paint application, and light/shadow, are elevated to conceptual roles. While visually grounded, they perform symbolic functions, pointing beyond themselves to art’s ontology.

Epilogue: Mirrors, Shadows, Hieroglyphs, and Painting’s Paradox—Truth or Fiction?

The Echo Chamber Project stages the dynamics between  the self-referentiality of the symbolic system and the reflexivity of painting. As a Mandarin speaker raised with China’s pictographic heritage—where the character for "turtle" (龟) evolved from an ancient pictorial form—I perceive deep affinities between language and painting. 

“Turtle”in bone oracle character

Both systems can interrogate their own existence: painting examines painting, just as language explains grammar. This self-referential capacity breeds paradoxes, as seen in Escher’s Drawing Hands or the Liar’s Paradox ("This sentence is false").

The Echo Chamber Project’s entanglement with dual paradoxes—symbolic and painterly—generates two coexisting yet divergent effects:  

1. A closed loop of recursive play, an infinite hall of mirrors.  

2. A reflexive critique revealing painting’s internal logic, enabling cognitive evolution.  

In viewing experience, effect 1 becomes both the key to effect 2 and a vortex that traps the observers. Yet as the creator, I’m most compelled by each painting’s unique phenomenology. Though operating on simple principles, each work possesses distinct flavor. Interrogating “why they look the way they do” becomes a generative learning process.

To conclude, I invoke Yashica Dahbre’s commentary:  

“She does not treat symbols as direct transmitters of meaning, but as relational forms—shaped by context, culture, and perception. A shadow, a dove, in a hand, a moon: these are not stable signs, but open fields. Meaning is never delivered; it is always approached, suspended.  

This logic is informed by a deep historical awareness. The history of painting predates formalized language—certainly structured systems like the English alphabet. While letters serve as elemental units of language, painting operates through a looser, more interpretive syntax, where symbols are not defined but instead charged with shifting, unstable meanings. Serene uses this instability not as a gap to be resolved, but as the central premise of her work.  

Ultimately, Serene’s paintings do not resolve into meaning—they reside in its potential. Her symbols are precise in form but diffuse in purpose. They are not signs that deliver, but forms that suggest. Rather than using painting to assert clarity, she uses it to carefully dissolve it. What emerges is a language of suspension: a quiet, deliberate unfixing. A return to the moment before symbols settled into code.”