A pit in the stomach, a sense of unease or dread physically registered by the body: can this sensation be rendered visually? Beili Liu conveys this helpless anxiety in Miasma (2009), one of two installations at Three Walls Gallery. The other, Lapse (2009), provides a counterpoint. In the process of making her art, Liu maintains a careful balance between destruction and creation. Lapse is bright and expansive, which counteracts out the cipher-like quality of Miasma.

Miasma, a mobile-like installation made from a cluster of long, snarled strands of black wool, darkens the bright white gallery walls like a storm cloud. Liu hung each snarled strand from the ceiling by monofilament, each at a distinct distance from both ceiling and floor, so that the entire group appears invisibly suspended in the air. Longer strands loom in the back of the cloud, giving the form a sense of rising or expanding upwards. Part of Liu’s Three Thousand Troubled Threads series, the installation references hair, which the artist explained is considered a burden in China. Liu alters the rope-like wool threads, which bear an uncanny resemblance to hair, by hand, and then uses acrylic medium to sculpt and preserve the shapes of her twists, pulls and snarls. Like a maddened mother, instead of smoothing and plaiting a child’s hair, she rends it into difficult kinks and tangles.

Lapse, a twelve foot long piece mounted on the right wall consists of three panels but appears to be seamless. Liu used a torch to burn multiple layers of vellum. She then cut the burned edges into strips and layered them onto the panels with acrylic medium. The unburned white paper stripes contrast with the brownish charred edges so that the smooth surface gives an allusion of three dimensionality. The effect of the torch on the visible edges of the vellum strips is subtle; the eye follows the small delicate tracings of burned edges in the same way it follows the strands of wool in Miasma, riding the slight curves, indentations and bumps along the way. Overall, the many strips meld into a flawless visual rhythm, despite the variations of each strip’s edge. The result looks like tree bark compressed and flattened into an elegant pattern.

Liu goes through a process of destructing her materials, thread and vellum paper, so that she may reorder and design the installations. Part of the process is happenstance—how the threads pull apart and how the flames burn—but the artist’s hand is controlling the depth of the media’s alterations, leaving behind traces of anxiety, capturing and holding these elusive feelings like specimens on a glass slide.

Wendy Atwell received her M.A. in Art History and Criticism from The University of Texas at San Antonio.