LOY LUO SPACE

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Loy Luo: The Visibility of Thought

--An interview with Jonathan Goodman

 

January 5, 2026 | Originally published in Tussle Magazine; republished in Loy Luo Theoretical Collection

 

 

Abstract

 

This interview presents Loy Luo’s artistic practice as a sustained inquiry into the conditions under which thought becomes visible through image, text, and action. Rather than framing art as a matter of style, identity, or representation, the conversation examines how abstraction emerges from lived existence, philosophical reflection, and embodied experience. Luo articulates a system in which abstraction and figuration are not opposing categories but relational thresholds, continuously negotiated through artistic practice. Central to the discussion is her critique of modernist abstraction, her rejection of purely formal or expressive models, and her proposal of abstraction as the descent of metaphysical structure into material presence. The interview further addresses questions of cultural attribution, artistic independence, and the construction of an artist-run space as a site of thought. Due to the limits of the interview format, this text functions as an outline of Luo’s artistic thinking; more extensive theoretical elaborations can be found in her other writings. Taken together, the text situates art not as an object of interpretation, but as a generative structure through which existence, perception, and meaning are continuously reconfigured.

 

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Keywords

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Abstraction · Visibility of Thought · Lived Experience · Methodology · Individual Vision · Beyond Cultural Representation · Process-Based Practice · Image–Text–Action ·  Metaphysics and Manteriality ·  Artistic Methodology ·  Cultural Misreading

 

 

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Full Text: https://www.loyluospace.com/the-visibility-of-thought

DOI: [TBD]

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Biographical Note

 

Jonathan Goodman is a New York–based art critic and writer, known for his long-term engagement with modern and contemporary art, as well as his sustained attention to Asian art and culture.

 

 

Loy Luo is a contemporary artist based in New York. Her practice integrates painting, sculpture, installation, writing, and the operation of artist-run spaces, and is grounded in a long-term investigation of the philosophical and cultural dimensions of abstraction. In recent years, through what she defines as an Unpremeditated Actionist approach to artistic generation—together with spatial practice, exhibition-making, and interdisciplinary collaborations—she has expanded her earlier focus on individual artistic production into a broader inquiry into how art is generated within specific cultural, social, spatial, and institutional contexts.

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All responses and theoretical positions in this text are authored by the artist.

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