Surface & Signal Press, an independent arts-research communications imprint operated by Jeekwai Art Co Ltd, has announced the publication of a peer-reviewed paper in the Proceedings of EVA London 2026. The paper, titled "Fixing Chicago Neighbourhood and New Nature: Simulation with Paper and Digital Printing," is authored by Jiaqi Li, Wenru Xu, and Elke Reinhuber, and is available open access at https://doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVA2026.15.
The paper analyzes two artworks by Jiaqi Li: New Nature (2019) and Fixing Chicago Neighbourhood (2020). In New Nature, photographs of organic materials such as banana peel, chicken skin, plants, and caterpillars were transformed into repeating digital textures and printed on paper. These prints were then assembled into over fifty hollow sculptural forms, contrasting the visual appearance of organic matter with a lightweight, constructed interior. This work emphasizes the separation between surface and structure, questioning the nature of representation.
Fixing Chicago Neighbourhood began with photographs of damaged surfaces in Chicago, including cracks in roads, walls, paving, and transit stations. Li digitally reconstructed the damaged areas and printed them at approximately their original scale. The resulting paper images were placed over the actual damaged sites as temporary interventions. While they did not physically repair the underlying material, they made visible the difference between an appearance of repair and actual material repair. The projects are situated between simulation, trompe l'oeil, and optical illusion, but they deliberately avoid flawless deception. Instead, they retain visible seams, repeated textures, paper edges, and other material inconsistencies, allowing viewers to recognize the constructed nature of the image while it occupies physical space.
The authors introduce the term "expanded trompe l'oeil" to describe contemporary practices that extend beyond illusionistic painting to include photography, digital printing, sculpture, installation, screens, projections, public interventions, and video-game aesthetics. They argue that the imperfect return of a digital image to material form can reveal a productive gap between virtual representation and physical objects. This gap invites critical reflection on how images shape our perception of reality, particularly in urban environments where repair and maintenance are often simulated rather than substantive.
The paper appears on pages 83-88 of the open-access Proceedings of EVA London 2026, published by BCS Learning and Development Ltd. EVA London, or Electronic Visualisation and the Arts, is an interdisciplinary conference focusing on art, visualization, and digital technologies. The 2026 conference took place in London and online from July 13 to 17. Surface & Signal Press, operated by Jeekwai Art Co Ltd, publishes factual, accessible communications about contemporary art, visual culture, digital media, and research-led creative practice, with a focus on how images, materials, and technical systems shape public and everyday environments.
