Surface & Signal Press, an independent arts-research communications imprint operated by Jeekwai Art Co Ltd, announced the publication of a peer-reviewed paper in the Proceedings of EVA London 2026. Titled "Fixing Chicago Neighbourhood and New Nature: Simulation with Paper and Digital Printing," the open-access paper is available at https://doi.org/10.14236/ewic/EVA2026.15.
The paper, authored by Jiaqi Li, Wenru Xu, and Elke Reinhuber, explores two artworks by 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 processed into repeating digital textures and printed on paper to create more than fifty hollow sculptural forms. The work highlights the contrast between the visual appearance of organic matter and its lightweight, constructed interior, drawing attention to the separation between surface and structure.
Fixing Chicago Neighbourhood began with photographs of damaged surfaces in Chicago—cracks in roads, walls, paving, and transit stations. The damaged areas were digitally reconstructed and printed at approximately their original scale. The paper images were placed over the damaged sites as temporary interventions. They did not repair the underlying material but made the difference between an appearance of repair and a material repair visible. The authors place these projects between simulation, trompe l'oeil, and optical illusion. Rather than seeking flawless deception, the works retain visible seams, repeated textures, paper edges, and other material inconsistencies, allowing viewers to recognize the construction of the image while it occupies physical space.
The paper proposes the term "expanded trompe l'oeil" for contemporary practices that extend beyond illusionistic painting to include photography, digital printing, sculpture, installation, screens, projections, public interventions, and video-game aesthetics. It argues that the imperfect return of a digital image to material form can reveal a productive gap between virtual representation and physical objects. This has implications for how artists and designers approach urban repair and public art, suggesting that temporary, visible interventions can provoke critical reflection on the nature of repair and simulation.
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 on art, visualisation, and digital technologies. The 2026 conference took place in London and online from July 13 to 17.
