Gabriel Liu
Born in 1995 and graduated from University of the Arts London, the designer positions fabric and silhouette as a medium for perception. Guided by intuition rather than structural preconception, garments unfold as a simultaneous occurrence of bodily experience and internal awareness, shifting away from narrative emphasis to transmit a gentle, positive energy.
Flowers, flowing water, and light serve as recurring motifs, merging through fluid colour and soft, sculptural relationships to build enveloping, restorative sartorial spaces. Featured in ELLE and VOGUE, the designer presents a new series of surreal botanical garments, inviting viewers into a mental space of stable, positive emotional presence through lightness and structural fluidity.
Selected Works
Artist Statement
I aim to preserve a sense of purity in my artistic practice, allowing myself to be guided by brushstrokes, color, and structure so that the image can emerge organically. For me, painting is not a representation of reality, but an event of perception — a direct manifestation of my immediate mental and emotional state.
Flowers, flowing water, and light repeatedly appear as core visual motifs in my work. Lacking fixed forms, these elements carry shifting emotions and the movement of energy. During the painting process, they gradually detach from their natural references and merge into a surreal, psychological space, forming fluid, open compositional structures.
Alongside painting, I work in fashion design and photography, participating in the full lifecycle of materials — from selection and construction to final image-making. This cross-disciplinary experience has shaped my sensitivity to texture, layering, and light, and has informed a more dimensional spatial understanding in my paintings. The softness of fabric, the refraction of light, and the movement of water are translated into rhythms of brushwork and the breathing of colour.
In my practice, I seek to reduce preconception and control, allowing body and perception to operate intuitively. I see myself as a recorder of my current mental state, while the image emerges from a process of free generation. For me, what both the viewer and I encounter is simply a human being who loves painting and communicates with the world through colour and form.
Selected Exhibitions
2026 The Second Future Art Festival: The Banquet of the Stove Society — Dongsheng 50, Shanghai, China
2026 Phantom Object Garden — ORRO1920, Hangzhou, China
2025 Another Room — Tu Cang Jin Ge, Hangzhou, China
2025 Expressions of Desire — Xianjia Art Space, Nanjing, China (Curator & Artist)
2020 Primitive Space — Independent Project, Nanjing, China
2020 Mighty Immortal Flower – Rain Sound Special Edition — Perfume Collaboration Project, Beijing, China
2018 TEDx Maojiabu Art Exhibition — Hangzhou, China
2016 The Floating World— Espacio Gallery, London, United Kingdom
2014 Edinburgh Festival— Edinburgh, United Kingdom

