Illustration / Undetectable Friendship
不被察觉的友情
2022 / Pencil and charcoal on paper
The ongoing project, Undetectable Friendship (2021), is a series of painting and 4 poems about friendship. The series consists of two women and a number of spatially charged symbols. The images are characterized by both warmth and sadness, as if the two women are accompanying each other, and as if they are about to be separated.
Friendship is the most common and natural of all human relationships. In terms of its universality, it even surpasses the family. A large proportion of people may not meet love for a long time, and some will never marry for the rest of their lives; many are unfortunate never to have met their parents, and many do not have brothers or sisters, but anyone who has lived for any time has had a friend. It is a relationship that is available to all of us. And yet, we hardly talk about it. What we are most familiar with in practice escapes us in the abstract. This is why Buer has titled this series of works Undetectable Friendship, making the viewer get the message before viewing the paintings through the simplest and clearest of names, so that they can think about friendship.
In terms of materials, Buer chose a combination of pencil and charcoal because she thinks that the texture and the visual experience for pencil is delicate and for charcoal is rough, but they both bring a childlike and unadorned feeling.