Timeless Venus by Tian Xiaolei
For Lancôme’s Art of Absolue Exhibition 2023, Somexing Artistic commissioned Chinese digital artist Tian Xiaolei to reinterpret Lancôme’s brand codes through a technological and contemporary lens. The project explores how the concept of beauty evolves over time while remaining an eternal human pursuit.
Inspired by Lancôme Absolue’s pioneering spirit and philosophy of perpetual renewal, Tian Xiaolei bridges classical aesthetics and digital innovation, using the Venus de Milo as the central figure in a reflection on humanity’s ongoing dialogue between art, science, and timelessness.
Timeless Venus
Entitled Timeless Venus, the installation by Tian Xiaolei reimagines the Venus de Milo through a fusion of sculpture, animation, and digital projection. Viewed from four sides, the figure reveals contrasting silhouettes — one representing the intricate beauty of classical form, the other reduced to minimal geometric purity, symbolizing the evolution of technology and aesthetic ideals over time.
Around the sculpture, planets, wristwatches, roses and diamonds orbit in continuous motion — metaphors for perpetuity, rhythm, and transformation. These elements evoke the passing of seasons and the flow of time, while the video projection runs on an infinite loop, without beginning or end, reflecting the eternal pursuit of beauty that defines every era.
Crafted with 3D modeling and immersive video techniques, Timeless Venus merges digital precision and artistic emotion to create a dynamic vision of beauty in perpetual transformation.
New Media Installation
200cm X 200cm X 400cm
Tian Xiaolei
Tian Xiaolei graduated from the School of Design of the Central Academy of Fine Arts with a bachelor’s degree and worked in Beijing. His works are mostly about the relationship between people and science and technology. He is interested in the uncertainty of rapid iteration in this era, the relationship between science and technology and life in species evolution, and the new trend of this mixed era. He uses the artist’s imagination to create future world samples, mixed culture, history, technology, body, and create new artistic experiences.
Tian Xiaolei’s works have been collected many times by important contemporary art institutions such as the Art Museum of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, the Today Art Museum, the Meulensteen in New York, the Hao Art Museum, the Art Museum of the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, and the Wang Shiguo Art Foundation. It is the vanguard force of new media art in China.
