Two sets of elongated drawings, one of flies, the other of city midges. They are duplicated, printed, and collaged to form nested door–like structures: a Tibetan ceremonial cabinet door and a Gothic church cabinet door. Using overlooked, everyday insects as structural elements, the work explores how different belief systems overlap and reorganize within lived experience.

Liu Zexuan born 1997 in Tibet, studied Thangka painting under the guidance of a lama. He graduated in 2021 with a degree in Oil Painting from Renmin University of China and is currently studying at the Städelschule in Frankfurt am Main. He lives and works between Frankfurt and Gannan.
Liu’s practice centers on painting and experimental image-based approaches. His work examines the transformation of ritual, sacred imagery, and embodied experience within contemporary visual systems, modes of circulation, and structures of knowledge. Through his work, he often creates tension between tradition and modernity, intuition and structure, as well as between intimate experience and the distance of viewing.