Paradoxically making the “doom scroll” pretty, artist Valerie Chua embraces and critiques our fleeting, vibe-driven visual culture

In our digital scrolling culture where images flash by in seconds, artist Valerie Chua has created paintings designed to make viewers pause—if only momentarily.

Her latest solo exhibition “Pretty Pointless Things” at West Gallery glows with ethereal, pastel-filtered scenes of ordinary objects: tangerines in a plastic bag, a fish sticking out of the ground, and the open pages of a book.

These seemingly mundane subjects take on a dreamlike quality through Chua’s process, which begins by digitally flattening reference photos and stripping away depth until only highlights and mid-tones remain. She then introduces new colors, crops the figures at unusual angles, and reorganizes these simplified forms into oil painting compositions that feel both familiar and strange.

Chua’s pastel hues and blurred edges echo the softened, nostalgic quality of many a filtered Instagram image, trending towards an aesthetic that is beautiful but detached.

“The works are pretty, the works are pointless, or perhaps just somewhat (yet not entirely) pointless,” Chua explains in her exhibition notes, acknowledging the central paradox of her latest paintings, which show our superfast, surface-level engagement with everything visual.

The digital scroll and concept of “the vibe”

Chua’s work directly addresses how our digital consumption moves through a “thumb treadmill” of quick flicks and scrolls. We might stop for an interesting fact or a meme for a few seconds, but rarely long enough to consider its deeper connotations.

“I noticed the older I get, the quicker I consume content,” she says. “Every day, I would see the hours that I spent on my phone, and it’s about four or five hours. I could have been painting… At the end of the day, I don’t even remember a single thing that I’ve seen.”

This modern condition forms the conceptual core of her exhibition. Citing John Berger, Chua writes, “The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.”

“Social media is the overarching scheme of the paintings that I do. For the longest time, I’ve lived in social media,” Chua says. That said, the artist doesn’t just engage with social media, she also allows people into this narrative through the critique of her paintings that embrace irony with intention.

“That’s how I approach my work as well, through the commodification of images,” she explains. “But a lot of images don’t mean so much. Sometimes you take photos of ordinary things and then you make it look nice, and you post it online… You want to show people, this is my life. It’s like you’re trying to curate your life.”

The way Chua crops a flock of birds mid-frame or tilts a book’s pages at odd angles also seems to mirror how we consume fragmented visuals on our screens, only half-seeing, before we move on to the next image.

These latest paintings capture this “shift” in our digital age, where moods and aesthetics dominate over meaning, resulting in compositions that are both beautiful and subtly paradoxical, like dream stills from a half-remembered post.

The creative shifts of Valerie Chua

The tension between depth and surface in Chua’s work reflects her own creative shifts as an artmaker.

Before establishing herself as a fine artist with multiple solo exhibitions under her belt and international showings from Seoul to Bangkok, Chua had an early relationship with digital culture as a blogger.

In the early 2010s, she was part of the first generation of bloggers (an early iteration of an influencer, for the Gen Alphas who might be reading this) alongside the likes of Camille Co and Tricia Gosingtian.

“I lived that life before,” she says. “It was enjoyable, but at the same time, I’m such an introvert… It was very hard for me to talk to other people during these events.” 

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The dissonance between her artistic identity and influencer expectations eventually became overwhelming and, with the conflict, Chua chose to nurture her authentic self as an artist.

After finishing her humanities degree in 2010, Chua pursued a three-month continuing education program at the New York Academy of Art in 2013 while also working as an assistant to American artist Erik Jones.

Before fully committing to fine art, Chua worked as a commercial illustrator, doing projects for brands like Christian Louboutin, Toblerone, and Japanese beauty brand SK-II. She recalls creating decorative watercolor images on tight deadlines, which helped toughen her own approach to art-making. 

“As an illustrator in the commercial industry, you have to do it fast… I was so used to working very, very fast as well as in the exchange between the client and the illustrator.”

Chua’s early fine art work also leaned heavily on her watercolor background, which she describes as “very decorative… very airy and flowy,” stylistic elements that continue to influence her oil paintings today. However, transitioning to oil painting presented challenges.

“I can paint oil, but my training in the States was more traditional. You copy masters… So I can copy stuff accurately, but I cannot translate the style.” This led Chua to develop her own style and approach, which is loose yet discernible, indulgent and aesthetically pleasing, which aligns with the concept of “Pretty Pointless Things.”

The paradox of “Pretty Pointless Things”

The exhibition’s title captures Chua’s conceptual framework—“pretty” pastel paintings of objects that are aesthetically pleasing yet deliberately “pointless,” avoiding heavy meaning. 

“I recognize that viewers may engage with these works momentarily; drawn in by their visual appeal, only to move on and forget them just as quickly… We’re just here, we like to be seen here, we like the crowd,” Chua acknowledges in her exhibition notes.

It’s an honest thought that reflects how art, like in the digital plane, might momentarily stop viewers in their tracks—before continuing to scroll to the next visual stimulation. Something we’re all guilty of.

Her works exist in a liminal space between meaning and its absence, substance and surface, exploring the tension between what Chua calls as “the seen and the superficial”—beautiful paintings that somehow resist deep analysis and invite reflection on our collective experience, all at the same time.

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In 2024, Chua became a mother while building a new home and balancing a thriving artistic practice. She also co-manages the artist-run initiative of Southeast Asian artists Faculty Projects with Jason Montinola and RG Gabunada. 

“It was very confusing… going through the motions of where to allocate my time,” she says. Though she works at her own healthy pace, it’s remarkable that the artist has managed to carve out time for a conceptually precise solo exhibition, likely drawing on skills she learned during her time-pressured work as a commercial artist. Chua also credits her in-laws and husband for complementing her meticulous nature.

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As the artist navigates her own space, she continuously takes steps towards her plans for the year to come. “I just plan to make a lot of works this year,” she says. “I want to make for myself this time.”

While Chua prepares to paint at her own rhythm for the rest of the year,  “Pretty Pointless Things” presents a thought-provoking look at our own relationship with digital media.

Beneath their initial aesthetic appeal, her paintings raise important questions about the meaning of superficiality in our fast-feed world, proving that art about pointlessness can, paradoxically, make a significant point.

“Pretty Pointless Things” runs from Feb. 27 to Mar. 29, 2025 at West Gallery, 48 West Ave., Quezon City