Yang Lu
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The Rogue Planet I : Collision - Where the Story Begins
"White light -
instantly illuminating the sky.
Not dawn,
but a tearing.
I was stable,
yet something in me answered the void.
Not fully knowing,
but willing.
From silence to fracture,from orbit to unknown -
the story began
in the moment of collision."
oil on CNC wood and plexiglass, 57 x 45 x 3/4 in, 2025
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The Rogue Planet II : Orbitless - Is Drifting Freedom or Disaster
"I broke from the cycle.
No sun, no pull,
no voice calling me back.
Alone,
but unbound.
I drift -
not lost,
but free.
Every direction
is a beginning."
oil on CNC wood and plexiglass, 57 x 47 x 3/4 in, 2025 -
The Rogue Planet III: Hope - Until the Light Shines Again
"I drift, but I do not vanish.
I freeze, but I do not die.
I find light in exile.
And I remember the stars."
oil on CNC wood and plexiglass, 61 x 49 x 3/4 in, 2025 -
The Rogue Planet, 07/2025, SVA, New York, USA
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The Rogue Planet is an imagined journey into the cosmos - a mineral world cast adrift from its native galaxy after a celestial disruption.
Flung into the interstellar dark, it becomes orbitless: wandering without a star, without a sun, yet not without memory or will. The series traces its journey - from the violent moment of ejection, through the vast void and uncertainty of drifting, to the fragile hope of one day encountering a new star.Life persists on frozen land. Intelligence endures. Hope, through layers of ice and shadow, still glimmers.Each work in this series is a fragment of that journey - a chapter of planetary consciousness suspended between collision and renewal, between ruin and light. -
Data Acquisition, 3d printing resin and rose gold mirror, 19 x 25 in, 2025
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Data Acquisition, 3d printing resin and rose gold mirror, 19 x 25 in, 2025
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Soul Extraction, 3d printing resin and rose gold mirror, 16 x 29 in, 2025
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See Heaven, 3d printing resin and rose gold mirror, 27 x 16 in, 2025
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See Heaven, 3d printing resin and rose gold mirror, 27 x 16 in, 2025
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Put Away Your Pink Lens, 08/2025, SVA, New York, USA
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In the Put Away Your Pink Lens series, the use of the rose-gold mirror is not intended to amplify beauty, but to subvert people’s expectations of it. People have an innate desire to look into mirrors—hoping to see their own image, hoping to affirm possession of the “self” through gazing at their reflection. When confronted with the surface of a rose-gold mirror, they tend to associate it with feelings of “romance” or “intimacy,” just as, historically, humanity has projected elements of “desire” onto the objective existence of pearls. Humans are always setting up systems of standards and cultures—within a world they did not create—to define and assign “meaning” to other living beings. Through this series, I aim to reverse that gaze and act of definition, creating an atmosphere in which the viewer, upon looking into the mirror, feels targeted, observed, analyzed, and recorded like a specimen.
Some misuse religious concepts to cultivate personal cults, pursuing dominance over other forms of life while fearing to confront the truth. This series is meant to simulate a kind of measurement and definition conducted by an alien civilization. Rose-gold mirror and transparent resin form works that, at first glance, feel dreamlike and sacred, yet become increasingly unsettling the longer one looks. I want the viewer to feel as though they are being watched by a civilization that is deep, cold, and sharp—one that has no empathy for, nor any need to understand, humans.In the first mirror, when viewers gaze into it, they are being measured. They do not need to understand the measurement’s standards, nor the meaning of the symbols or patterns annotated upon them—just as the things humanity has marked and categorized do not understand what they represent in human civilization. The second mirror is mysterious, covered in totems whose meanings are unknowable to humans. When viewers attempt to look through it to see their own reflection (seeking outward confirmation of their existence), they enter the process of soul extraction. They need not know what the ritual has analyzed, archived, recorded, or altered, because this civilization has no obligation to explain to the observed and marked objects—just as humans do not explain such things to other species.The third mirror leaves space to “See Heaven.” Presented without any text or explanation, it is a mirror etched with a horizontal line at its center. Any thoughts or interpretations that arise in the viewer’s mind when facing it merely reflect their own cognition and standards—in other words, they will see only what they wish to see, not any so-called “objective truth.” In fact, when they view the world through an anthropocentric lens, they cannot truly see heaven. This “heaven” is therefore false—a false salvation—just as anthropocentrists have long deceived themselves and others.
