March 2025 - Lunar Sketches: Origins in Song My initial inspiration came from songs I listened to repeatedly late at night. Li Jian's "Lake Baikal" always plunged me into a peculiar emotion—why does it sound so melancholy when the lyrics describe such beautiful scenes? Another song with special meaning for me is "Half Moon Serenade," with its most touching line: "People are like the moon in the sky, impossible to possess." I often gaze at the moon. The moon is an ancient motif.
April 2025 - Falling Petals: Spring Anxiety Beijing's spring is brief. Every year in April and May, when the city blooms, I fall into inexplicable melancholy. Standing at the window of my rented room, watching the crabapple petals fall outside, I suddenly realized—I was grieving for beauty that cannot be retained. Camellias As spring's flowering season arrived, my feeling for this unattainable beauty shifted from the moon to flowers. The spring in Beijing, where I used to live, is very short. Every year in April and May, when the city blooms, I fall into inexplicable melancholy. Standing at the window of my rented room, watching the crabapple petals fall outside, I suddenly realized—I was grieving for beauty that cannot be retained. I love camellias because they are rare. Their blooming period is short, and few flower shops sell them. Additionally, camellias carry many labels and misunderstandings, which is what I want them to have. This is like women themselves.
Questioning Girls: Self-Examination When painting figures, I found myself unconsciously depicting the same expression—a questioning gaze tinged with subtle sadness.
Printmaking Experiments: Reproduction and Uniqueness I began experimenting with printmaking, particularly woodcut.
Tropical Penguin (2018) is a painting by the young Chinese artist Sun Yitian. In my view, the penguin in this painting appears to be deliberately placed under artificial lighting, with shadows and highlights that remind me of a performer under stage lights or a spotlighted object on display, awaiting scrutiny. This dramatic lighting enhances its theatrical quality, making it more than just a simple depiction of a toy—it seems to be imbued with a symbolic significance. At the same time, the penguin looked familiar to me. I believe it resembles a popular inflatable toy from the 1990s, and I remember having one exactly like it at home when I was a child. This recognition gave me a sense of nostalgia, making me wonder if this artwork is not only about consumer culture but also about collective memory and personal experience. I believe this painting explores themes of consumer culture, the relationship between simulacra and reality, and the symbolic nature of mass-produced objects. It does not merely depict a toy but prompts questions about how we perceive, value, and interact with objects in an era of mass production.
The Materialization of Collective Memory: Trauma and History in Contemporary Art
The Aesthetics of the Unattainable:
I believe my artworks are a form of elegy, or rather, an attempt to preserve moments that cannot be preserved. I depict flowers and desolate scenes. These images represent my understanding of life's meaning and my conception of an ideal world.These implicit, subtle, and poetic images are influenced by the Chinese literati spirit, particularly literati painting. Ancient scholars from different eras, when facing life's inevitable suffering, often sought their own pleasures rather than confronting difficulties and pain directly. This Daoist philosophy of following nature and pursuing spiritual freedom also flows through my veins.
March 2025 - Lunar Sketches: Origins in Song
My initial inspiration came from songs I listened to repeatedly late at night. Li Jian's "Lake Baikal" always plunged me into a peculiar emotion—why does it sound so melancholy when the lyrics describe such beautiful scenes? Another song with special meaning for me is "Half Moon Serenade," with its most touching line: "People are like the moon in the sky, impossible to possess." I often gaze at the moon. The moon is an ancient motif.
I began researching artists who depicted the moon.
Returning to my cultural context to find the moon's meaning, I discovered that moon-gazing is a common theme in literati painting, often symbolizing solitude and reclusion.（独处与避世）
This reminded me of myself and the current state of young people—lonely youth, the prevalence of "lying flat" culture.
His minimalist compositions and desolate atmosphere perfectly embody the literati's loneliness. This "withdrawal from the world" is not escape, but a form of active spiritual resistance. Not taking a stance is itself a stance.
April 2025 - Falling Petals: Spring Anxiety
Beijing's spring is brief. Every year in April and May, when the city blooms, I fall into inexplicable melancholy. Standing at the window of my rented room, watching the crabapple petals fall outside, I suddenly realized—I was grieving for beauty that cannot be retained.
Camellias As spring's flowering season arrived, my feeling for this unattainable beauty shifted from the moon to flowers. The spring in Beijing, where I used to live, is very short. Every year in April and May, when the city blooms, I fall into inexplicable melancholy. Standing at the window of my rented room, watching the crabapple petals fall outside, I suddenly realized—I was grieving for beauty that cannot be retained.
I love camellias because they are rare. Their blooming period is short, and few flower shops sell them. Additionally, camellias carry many labels and misunderstandings, which is what I want them to have. This is like women themselves.
Technical Exploration: Acrylic Interpretation of Literati Painting
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Diluting acrylics to simulate ink wash effects
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Preserving the calligraphic quality of brushstrokes
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Color choices: shifting from cool tones to warm reds
Questioning Girls:
Self-Examination
When painting figures, I found myself unconsciously depicting the same expression—a questioning gaze tinged with subtle sadness.
Printmaking Experiments: Reproduction and Uniqueness
I began experimenting with printmaking, particularly woodcut.
Woodcut
I use woodcut for two reasons.
First, I believe it's a method that can quickly synthesize an image while producing surprising effects.
Second, printmaking was my undergraduate major, and it has been an important art form in China since the May Fourth Movement, embodying the spirit of freedom itself.
On Transfer Printing
Each transfer produces random surprising effects.
These effects are inherent to the materials themselves—not mutations, but qualities that are deeply hidden or require specific conditions to trigger.
This reminds me of my own quick sketches.
I use sketching to record inspiration from online images or the real world. Then during creation, I work by looking at my own sketches—this is also a form of transfer.I believe this transfer method can activate the creator's subconscious. The creator themselves becomes a creative material or condition. One's experiences, knowledge, and skills all merge within the creator, becoming variables in the work.When researching Northern Wei stone reliefs, I was drawn to the images of the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove. Their attitude of withdrawal from the world is so similar to today's phenomenon of "going mystical."
