This series of digital illustrations invite the viewers into a world where beauty and distortion coexist in gleaming contradiction. At first glance, each piece seduces with its chrome-finished surface — a visual language of polish, pop, and perfection. But beneath the lustrous exterior, something else stirs.

Black, sharp claw-like forms crawl out of the shadows of the chrome, tearing through its perfection with quiet violence. These marks aren’t decorative; they’re woven into the physics of light and form, fused with each object's reflective skin. The smoother the chrome, the more disturbing the tension beneath — as if the surface itself is trying to hold in a scream.

Braille, Morse code, and binary sequences punctuate the compositions, each one carrying coded meanings behind the Chinese characters they accompany. What seems playful or poetic at first becomes layered with subtext — translating into messages of digital disconnection, commodified joy, or existential emptiness. Morse smileys glitch into hollow emotion. Braille spells out truths meant to be felt rather than seen.

Each layout is a deliberate construction — not just an artwork, but a graphic system. The precision of composition, use of typography, and spatial rhythm reflect Jess’ background in the design industry. Years of experience in commercial visual language are repurposed here into something more personal, more subversive — where the rules of design are followed just enough to be broken.

This series doesn’t just look at beauty. It looks through it — exposing the tension between polished perfection and the quiet claws of unease trying to escape from underneath.

Below are the digitally illustrated copies that will be translated into painting.