Shanghai-based artist Liu Deng loves clutter. He collects chess pieces and animal masks,Table lamps and rubber ducks, Action figures,Scarves,Things scavenged from the street,Things bought in a bazaar,Even objects from friends’ homes—which he’ll ask to borrow, of course. Only when he has amassed a respectable heap, will he sit down and draw.Drawing, for Liu Deng—to literally translate from the poetic Chinese he uses in his artist statement—is combing out the knots in his brain.“In real life, I am easily entangled in things I cannot express with clarity,” he says. “I can’t find the courage to move forward, a continual state of panic obstructs me.” It’s drawing this rubbish that allows to him escape from reality, apparently.As an artist who often confronts the problem of expressing reality, I think I understand Liu Deng’s statement. He’s talking about a kind of artistic paralysis in the face of the Gestalt. For, if we look at any one thing in isolation, we may fool ourselves into perceiving it as self-subsisting, whole. We may write about it, draw it out on a canvas, make a photo of it; in short, portray it as a specimen of the phenomenal world fixed in time and space. However, given the fact that no one thing exists outside of its relationship to other objects, this notion is pure vanity on our part: our direct representations will never successfully replicate what it is. Liu Deng has therefore made his subject matter that very relationship between one object and another. His work, Interior Scenery No. 8, was executed with the humble ballpoint pen.He began first with the idea of the form: a triptych. Following this, he constructed an “interior scenery” out of a rubbish heap. He sat in a chair some distance away from the heap to contemplate it. Then, over the course of one month, calling upon his imagination as much as his observation, he slowly filled in the three panels of his triptych.The result is overwhelming to look at. Every square inch is filled up with intricate detail. Although its petite size (200 x 127mm) may give the viewer the impression of manageability, he finds himself quickly lost inside of Liu Deng’s meticulous drawing once he enters it. At first, it would seem as if there were few resting places for the eyes—everything seems to rush at the viewer. Yet, once he allows his gaze to rest on something, recognizable objects start to materialize. The figure of a smiling dinosaur, a dragonhead, power sockets, wires—which are everywhere, connecting objects one to another, but also strangling them in their vise. As soon as the viewer moves his gaze somewhere else, however, these objects fade back into the cluttered background again.What makes Liu Deng’s work always mesmerizing is the strong sense of design behind it, which seems to be orchestrating all the chaos. Like ants obeying a scent known only to themselves, the lines in Liu Deng’s etchings strike with a similar sense of purpose. Even if recognizable objects do not always materialize before our eyes in this particular work, the lines still, undeniably, constitute substantial bodies: only what? Liu Deng therefore exploits the viewer’s penchant for misrecognition as much as recognition. Every viewer takes away different impressions—but all come back again to comb the knots in Liu Deng’s brain.