Whitestone Gallery Taipei is pleased to present Wandering Verse, a duo exhibition featuring Japanese artist Karen Shiozawa and Chinese artist duo Li Wei & Liu Zhiyin. Through the distinct yet complementary languages of painting and sculpture, the exhibition unfolds a poetic dialogue between personal memory and collective emotion. Karen Shiozawa captures fleeting flashes of childhood memory through richly layered colors, creating dreamlike, lyrical scenes imbued with a sense of nostalgia. Li Wei and Liu Zhiyin explore the sculptural form as a vessel that integrates Eastern philosophical spirit with contemporary individual experience. Their works construct a meditative visual field where material presence meets spiritual resonance. Like a wandering journey through time, the artists delicately weave color, light, and space into evocative expressions that take the form of visual verses. These works quietly preserve memories and emotions, allowing them to linger beneath the surface with subtle resonance. The exhibition will be on view from July 12 to August 16, 2025, with an opening held on July 12 at 4 PM.

‘Guided by the light of memories coming from far away, I move through a sea of melodies. With each new encounter, the doors of imagination open endlessly.’

-Karen Shiozawa

Karen Shiozawa “Voyage” 2025, Oil, acrylic, and alkyd resin on board, 162.0 x 130.3 cm (Each, a set of 2 pics)

Karen Shiozawa, born in 1998 in Kanagawa, Japan, holds a Master’s degree in Fine Arts from Tokyo Zokei University. Her artistic practice blends childhood memories, personal experiences, and poetic imagination. Through layered painting techniques, she depicts landscapes, architecture, and young female figures, exploring the delicate interplay between emotion, memory, and spatial perception. Using bright colors as a foundation and overlaying them with darker tones to define detail, Shiozawa creates dreamlike, ephemeral scenes that appear to flicker in and out of view and guides viewers into luminous spaces where memories quietly resurface. She received the Best Formative Art Prize at the 2018 Asian Creative Art Exhibition held at the National Art Center, Tokyo, and the Excellence Award at the 48th Tokyo-ten Exhibition at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum in 2022. Her works are acquired by Deji Art Museum in China. In Wandering Verse, the artist presents ten new works that continue her voyage of memories and nostalgic emotions. She seeks an ineffable yet profoundly moving light that emerges where personal experience intersects with the viewer’s inner landscape.

‘Form and atmosphere—form is a kind of restriction and a kind of self-demarcation; atmosphere is vagueness, a cloud-like change, and a transcendence. The works of Li Wei and Liu Zhiyin feel like a dialogue between form and atmosphere. The tangible things convey the artists’ sense of self, while the atmospheric elements embrace to the other, revealing the potential for transcendence. Their works are a dialogue, between heterogeneous things, and between the two artists.’

-Dr. Feng Zi Jie _{note
Note: Feng Zi Jie, Ph.D. in Philosophy, Peking University}

Li Wei & Liu Zhiyin “Evening Breeze” ed. 7/8, 2021, Copper, 80.0 × 60.0 × 60.0 cm (Left)
Li Wei & Liu Zhiyin “The Distant Clouds” 1/8, 2025, Bronze, 147.0 × 38.0 × 45.0 cm (Right)

Li Wei and Liu Zhiyin are sculpting art partners, both born in 1980 and graduates from the prestigious Luxun Academy of Fine Arts in China. They currently live and work in Beijing. Li majored in sculpture, while Liu specialized in fashion design. Merging their distinct backgrounds, the duo has developed a unique sculptural language rooted in the dialogue between ‘form’ and ‘body’—Liu constructs the form, and Li shapes the body. Their interdependent relationship forms the conceptual foundation of their work. Grounded in formal exploration, their practice delves into the transcendental interplay between physical structure and spiritual expression. Their works have been collected by major institutions such as the Long Museum in Shanghai, the Museum of Contemporary Art Yinchuan, and the Nanjing Museum, as well as by numerous private collectors. In Wandering Verse, the artists present their works that incorporate the visual language of fashion and color to evoke a poetic atmosphere, where emotion, light, and shadow converge. Through this spatial and sculptural interplay, they construct an inner realm of spiritual resonance, inviting viewers into a profound connection between visual perception and emotional reflection. Their practice continues to engage with the traditions of Eastern aesthetics while offering a nuanced response to contemporary individual experience.