Lo Chan Peng: “The Garden of Forking Paths takes its inspiration from the short story of the same name by the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges, whom I deeply admire. One current running through my work is the portrayal of ‘historical game-changers’ — great minds who have shaped human history; I have painted Osamu Dazai and Ryuichi Sakamoto, and Borges belongs among them.

Though the title names a garden, the picture folds together my own projection (the young woman within it), the dislocation of time an artist feels inside and outside the studio, and the fantasies that surface and merge over a long process of making. In a sense, I myself stand within that forking garden.

What truly fascinates me is that the viewer can never know what the figure sees — perhaps the abyss of the cosmos, a distant past and future; perhaps the viewer themselves, or the air between them. As with Leonardo’s figures, the eyes I paint leave the looking endlessly open.”