Curatorial Article丨Here and Then

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#此地彼时#史怡然#黄宝莹

2024 Aug.31?????

The relationship between place and time is always winding and complex.

Although the works in this exhibition primarily feature indoor still lifes and home scenes by Huang Baoying and locations from her travels where Shi Yiran stayed or visited, the driving force behind both artists' work stems from their intimate connection with the idea of home and migration. For Huang, who has lived abroad for years, from Shenzhen to New York, "home" has always been temporary and unstable. The frequent moves and the insecurity of fluctuating between the identities of host and guest have recently shifted toward a more stable and relaxed state with her latest move. For Shi, from Inner Mongolia to Hangzhou, time has not dulled her sense of rootlessness in a foreign place; instead, it has sparked a strong interest in her homeland. She has become particularly fascinated with understanding the long history of these places, which led her to conduct cultural and geographical explorations in Hulunbuir and the Greater Khingan Range.

“Here and Then”Exhibition Ground 2024?FerrisGallery

Both artists' paintings are realistic and figurative but not necessarily aimed at reproducing reality. Even though viewers can easily recognize the potted plants, floral arrangements, fireworks, curtains, lamps, dolls, maps, and museum display cases depicted in the paintings, in the works, they appear as observations of phenomena flowing through time: seemingly quiet, yet with hidden undercurrents. Andrei Tarkovsky wrote in his film diarySculpting in Time, "It is still in one moment, but it is also permeated with the continuous flow of time, carrying abundant emotions and thoughts... Time is a condition, a flame, in which the fire of the human soul resides…… Time and memory blend like two sides of the same coin." Therefore, the present moment is almost unattainable, and any attempt to capture it can only freeze it in the past; only through distance and separation can one revisit the past moment. The works in this exhibition create space through this distance and separation; furthermore, the paintings become places. These places can exist independently or together as vivid interpretations of traveling or staying in time.

Their past paintings have already showcased the diversity of time and space, used collage and overlapping techniques to juxtapose images from various sources within a single frame. Much like Richard McGuire's groundbreaking graphic novelHere, which depicts a house in New Jersey over millions of years, presenting the passage of time in a multi-paneled format on each page, creating a detailed journey rich with diverse threads. This article closely reads the two artists' creative paths, aiming to "decode" the various "mechanisms" within their paintings and enrich the reader's experience as they delve into the time-space depicted in the artworks.

史怡然 Shi Yiran

梦旅店 Dream Inn

木板丙烯 Acrylic on Wood Panel

120 × 90 cm

2024

?Shi Yiran. Courtesy Ferris Gallery

"Material and medium are the connections between the earth and the body, undoubtedly stemming from the perceptions the external world gives you." Shi Yiran, fascinated with geography since childhood, says, "Most geographical terms—strata, vegetation, ocean currents, cyclones—all possess unique landscapes, colors, sounds, and smells, and they can even be metaphors in themselves. Geographical terms can mark and evoke many sensations, memories, and imaginations."

With each of her various travels and residencies, whether long or short, she channels the feelings, memories, and imaginations from all over the world into the colors, objects, and spaces in her paintings, as if attempting to transport the viewer to an anonymous destination that excites her yet also subtly haunts her. In the opening of Herman Melville's classicMoby-Dick, he vividly describes a large, smoke-blurred painting hanging in the corridor of the Spouter-Inn: "But what most puzzled and confounded you was a long, limber, portentous, black mass of something hovering in the centre of the picture over three blue, dim, perpendicular lines floating in a nameless yeast. A boggy, soggy, squitchy picture truly, enough to drive a nervous man distracted. Yet was there a sort of indefinite, half-attained, unimaginable sublimity about it that fairly froze you to it, till you involuntarily took an oath with yourself to find out what that marvellous painting meant. Ever and anon a bright, but, alas! deceptive idea would dart you through.—It’s the Black Sea in a midnight gale.—It’s the unnatural combat of the four primal elements. —It’s a blasted heath. —It’s a Hyperborean winter scene. —It’s the breaking-up of the ice-bound stream of Time. But at last all these fancies yielded to that one portentous something in the picture’s midst. That once found out, and all the rest were plain. But stop; does it not bear a faint resemblance to a gigantic fish? even the great leviathan himself?

In fact, the artist’s design seemed this: a final theory of my own, partly based upon the aggregated opinions of many aged persons with whom I conversed upon the subject. The picture represents a Cape-Horner in a great hurricane; the half-foundered ship weltering there with its three dismantled masts alone visible; and an exasperated whale, purposing to spring clean over the craft, is in the enormous act of impaling himself upon the three mast-heads."

The mystery that captivated "me" in the mystic painting almost became a preview for the entire book; more than a century later, Haruki Murakami paid homage toMoby-Dick by naming a key location in his novel Dance Dance Dance "Dolphin Hotel." Shi's first series of works was also titled "Dolphin Hotel," the thrilling sense of adventure that the two novels brought readers is similarly ever-present in her paintings. Dolphins, transparently lurking or charging headlong, encounter faceless figures in weathered, peeling scenes where layered perspectives overlap, parallel, or even invert. Sci-fi-inspired blocks of color, light, and patterns hint at multiple mysterious events happening intensely and simultaneously. The suspenseful and eerie atmosphere continues in her subsequent series "Peacock Town" and "Lost and Found": faceless heads, an irregular blood-stained piece of fabric floating in the air, and the reappearance of the leaping dolphin image. However, the scenes are no longer as busy, the events unresolved, with glitch-like blocks suddenly fractured or broken, more clearly recognizable in the form of what Shi calls "color wheels" and "spectrums," which extend into her later "Mirage" series. She has mentioned more than once her rebellion against the tradition of harmonious color relationships, with bold, contrasting colors colliding recklessly in her paintings. The color forms of "color wheels" and "spectrums" amplify the independent voice of color, separate from form. Another "helping hand" in the independence of color is the creation of hard-edge effects, initially made using tape; in her new works from 2024, the artist can now achieve similar effects with a brush on wood panels.

This effect creates sharp, even razor-like edges and contour lines in the paintings, seamlessly complemented by Shi Yiran's consistent use of large brushes, where one stroke is a decisive, unambiguous statement. On the right part of the Window of Olguya Evenk Ethnic Township (2024), Shi paints the wall of a wooden cabin outside the blinds with vertical brown strokes using a large brush, neatly intersected horizontally by the light gray slat of the blinds. The snow on the cabin roof resembles the rough concrete texture, with the part hanging over the eaves rendered with the pink of the sunset, rough-edged and wrapped in cherry blossom hues. In a larger area of the same painting, color similarly plays the role of entirely dividing the composition into pure blocks. The upper part of the painting features multiple layers of "sun halos," expanding in an onion-like arc, almost touching, paralleling, or inverting each other (similar color wheels have appeared in her works multiple times, such as in The Station (2016) and The Study of Eliot (2022) ). The twilight cocktail mixes from brilliant yellow to intoxicating crimson, creating layered flavors on the same plane. Suppose you look a little longer; your slightly dizzy eyes might blur the distinction between inside and outside the window. In that case, the magical moment of day meeting night melts on this cold windowsill, which the artist translates into plum red, grass green, deep purple, and indigo, placed into transparent plastic jars and containers resembling paint tubes. The sweet, sticky plum-red sunset syrup under the eggplant-colored jar lid is a miniature version of multiple "sun halos" squeezed inside as if they might explode when opening the jar. Supporting the three "paint tubes," a dark gray color in the lower left forms a base, reminding the viewer of the imminent arrival of night.

史怡然 Shi Yiran

敖鲁古雅之窗 Window of Olguya Evenk Ethnic Township

木板丙烯 Acrylic on Wood Panel

80 × 100 cm

2024

?Shi Yiran. Courtesy Ferris Gallery

史怡然 Shi Yiran

车站 Station

布面油画 Oil on Canvas

160 × 200 cm

2016??

艾略特的书房 The Study of Eliot

肯特纸裱木板丙烯 Acrylic on Kent Paper on Board

71 × 87cm

Studio Gallery founder Zhuang Bin vividly pointed out how Shi Yiran's grasp of local colors in Dreamcatcher (2023) brought him the American sunshine: "Others adjust to the time difference when they arrive in America, but she adjusts to the 'color difference.'"

In the other works exhibited this time, the colors are sometimes bold, and the transitions between color wheels and spectrums appear smoother and more fluid. Shi's earlier works' strong contrasts and juxtapositions have blended into a more cohesive overall sense in her recent paintings. While retaining multiple perspectives and multi-sourced objects, these elements combine to create a richly layered sense of space in the compositions. Shi has mentioned that her painting aims to restore the natural way humans perceive the environment outside of the Western logic and geometric perspective system. "When I studied painting, my teacher would ask me to focus on a shape and squint one eye. This method goes against the visual mechanism. Humans have two eyes, and our eyeballs move. In fact, the earlier methods of using art to explain the world, like various legends or epics, were the real ways we interacted with the world... Constantly piecing together different fragments and sides. No one can see the whole picture because we are all inside it."

Realizing this way of perception on canvas requires a significant accumulation of technique and experience. For instance, Shi usually starts with an undercoat to create layers, then completes each color area in one go. Similar colors come near each other on the same plane, translating from three dimensions to two. She explained that it's identical to how édouard Manet'sThe Balcony (1868-1869) connects the black clothes of the man in the center with the dark background of the entire painting; yet, in terms of contour, it's the outline of him together with the two women on either side, forming three distinct figures. Manet's famous work, depicting the transformation of modern Paris, draws on Majas on a Balcony (1808-1814) by Francisco Goya, created nearly half a century earlier: the balcony railing overlaps with the flat plane of the painting itself. Thus, Manet strengthened his groundbreaking flattening effect.

Shi vividly refers to a painter's visual experience repository as useful "allusions." This repository includes visual memories accumulated from real-life experiences, related images or manuscript archives, and the rich practices of predecessors in art history and film works. These elements automatically intertwine within her perception and thinking as a painter. "A painter cannot escape visual experience. It's like a novelist who is always dealing with words; an artist, when looking at something, is inevitably influenced by art history. During the learning process, it's actually very difficult to detach from these powerful visual traditions of art history. When I'm traveling, I capture certain fragments, and after returning, I unconsciously categorize them." Borrowing and paying homage are standard practices in artistic creation. Jeff Wall, for instance, has mimicked classic paintings, movie scenes, and advertising shots, including works by Manet. Wall referred to these art historical visuals as "the germs of art, but here they are transformed into weapons." These allusions nourish different artists in different ways, but generally, a great painter is, first and foremost, a great connoisseur. She is genuinely attracted to artists who possess a systematic, self-sufficient visual language. For example, Andrew Wyeth's depiction of a building's window in the wilderness connects the solitude of the interior with the wildness of the outdoors, emitting an elusive sense of mystery; Matthias Weischer's chaotic yet harmonious multilayered spatial sense in his paintings; Edward Hopper's high-contrast, sometimes overly saturated, solitary light—all are "allusions" she has pondered over repeatedly.

（左）

爱德华·马奈 Edward Manet

阳台The Balcony

170 × 124.5 cm

1868-1869

巴黎奥赛博物馆藏

The Collection of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris

（右）

弗朗西斯科·戈雅 Franciso Goya

阳台上的少女 Majas on the balcony

194.8 × 125.7 cm

1810

纽约大都会艺术博物馆藏

The Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York

Another artist whose work reflects a unique understanding of history is Thomas Demand. One of his reconstructed historical images,Office (1995), with its sense of distance and everydayness in revisiting history from the present, once inspired Shi to explore the portrayal of paper through images. This connection is quite subtle, as the textural details of materials from significant historical moments hold a similar attraction for both artists. When discussing Demand's photos, which he reshot after modeled them based on historical images, Shanghai-based art critic Shi Hantao once remarked, "Regarding a historical scene, or participating in a historical scene, where people today engage with a past location—sometimes the location is the moment itself. Here, time and space are interconnected."

His profound insight reminds me of the Annales School of History, which introduced the groundbreaking idea that "historical time is multilayered and flows at different speeds." Under the historical perspective of Fernand Braudel, a leading figure of this school, time corresponding to structures and the long duration is called "geographical time." He once said, "Man has been prisoner for entire centuries of climates, vegetation, animal populations, cultures; in other words, a slowly constructed equilibrium that one cannot challenge without threatening everything."

 “L’homme est prisonnier, des siècles durant, de climats, de végétations, de populations animales, de cultures, d’un équilibre lentement construit, dont il ne peut s’écarter sans risquer de remettre tout en cause.” (Braudel, 1958, 731)

 Other factors constraining human society over the long term include the limitations of environmental-born mental frameworks. Returning to Shi's long-standing passion for the relationship between perception and geography in her work, as well as her focus on the historical evolution of human geography, her grasp of the sense of distance between "here and then" is expressed from the perspective of a participant or an involved observer. The vivid bodily experiences contained within, combined with the "allusions" she draws from visual and literary sources, constitute the actual material of her painting. "To this day, the focus of my work is still to form a narrative with distance through observation. However, this narrative differs from photography or traditional realistic painting in that it is a more internal narrative. I am practicing my visual theory through my eyes. What I see transforms into me, or rather, my spirit can only emerge through my eyes. Thus, I experience this system firsthand, then reemerge from it, layering what I see in the order of my perception. This is how my painting translates reality; it is still itself, but also not itself. This transformation is never speculated or interpreted through external logic. I only use the local language- that is, the shapes and colors I see—but at this point, my body has fragmented and reorganized the shapes and colors. In a sense, they are already abstract, but they can be restored through vision, thereby forming a description unique to me as the participant."

托马斯·迪曼德  Thomas Demand

办公室 Office

彩色合剂冲印 Color negative film development

180 × 240 cm

1995

Painting is a specific form of output. As Shi tries to explain in the above statement, she always asks herself before starting a painting, "Is it necessary to paint this? If using video, photography, or other media can express what I want to say more clearly, then is there still a need to paint it?" She also thought that "Is painting dead?" was false. She believes that today, "painting is alive... The scenes refined by figurative painting are a texture, no longer a narrative or just an event." Many artists share this view. Artist Han Mengyun has refuted this "narrow" discussion from a decolonization perspective, and Luc Tuymans has bluntly expressed his "love" for painting: "I'm damn sure I'm not that naive. Painting is the first conceptual image known to humanity, and painting is art. You paint with your hands; there are endless details you can play with. A painting has many layers, and its directions can be very diverse. Painting has a strong tactile quality and warmth; it is created with canvas material paint, allowing you to see many different things. Painting is unique."

Moreover, an artist "loyal" to painting can never be satisfied with their existing "skills." Shi Yiran says she has recently been obsessed with painting various distinct textures and tactile sensations, such as fur. She only paints one painting at a time, and with each one, she wants to continue expanding the expressive power of the language. This ambition or challenge is only sometimes achievable. Shi once compared swimming to painting: "I like swimming because it's the opposite of painting. With practice, you can feel the improvement in technique, whether in speed or endurance, and this progress is unmistakable. The permanent bodily memory built through exercises will never let you down. But in painting, it's hard to achieve a sense of accomplishment that matches the effort and reward. Often, a painting you've worked on for days can be ruined by a single stroke, bringing you back to square one. That sense of frustration can only be compensated for when swimming."

史怡然 Shi Yiran

Multiple perspectives are woven into Huang Baoying's figurative paintings through semi-transparent layers, with glass windows and other glass vessels frequently serving as mediums and subjects. The scenes within and outside of the glass are juxtaposed and slightly overlapped on the canvas, where the brightness of the foreground contrasts with the darkness on the opposite side of the glass, clear elements correspond with blurred ones, and still live at the center of the composition are matched by more intricate indoor or outdoor scenes. Additionally, she sometimes overlays watermark-like transparent layers, which could be flowers and leaves (as in Paradise, 2024), numbers (as in A Long Goodbye, 2024), stars (as in Contractor to the universe I, 2023), or chains (as in Moms, 2022). These images often originate from her everyday life experiences during the same period as her paintings and the imagery and ideas she gathers from films and reading.

乐园 Paradise

布面油画 Oil on Canvas

203.2 × 152.4cm

2024

黄宝莹 Huang Baoying

妈妈 Moms

布面油画 Oil on Canvas

122 × 91 cm

2022

In a typical scene by Huang, a solitary figure gazes through a glass window in the evenings with the interior lights on. The exterior reveals a residential area typical of an urban night, where nearby buildings' scattered windows and lights are visible. Unlike the bright lights of a bustling city, most buildings and streets outside remain in darkness. Though the households within these buildings are dense, they are distant, unfamiliar, and isolated. Within the painting is a sense of wind and breath, accompanied by a hint of the figure's solitude and quiet determination.

This determination sometimes manifests as a fierce, aggressive stance, as Huang does not shy away from using direct or violent imagery. Besides the chains mentioned above, she incorporates symbols like nooses (Unknown Thorns I, 2023) and green barriers (Forbidden Garden I & II, 2022). Potted plants and cut flowers, which frequently appear as central themes in her work, share a constrained existence. Whether the flowers are in full bloom or wilting (Don't sink into oblivion, 2023), or the green plants are lush yet subdued, the limitations on their life force are strikingly evident.

未知的荆棘之一 Unknown Thorns I

布面油画 Oil on Canvas

142 × 181 cm

2023

黄宝莹 Huang Baoying

禁忌家园之一 Forbidden garden I

布面油画 Oil on Canvas

63.5 × 66 cm 

2022

黄宝莹 Huang Baoying

不要软埋 Don't sink into oblivion

布面油画 Oil on Canvas

152.5 × 116.8 cm

2023

The allure of approaching the everyday through images is always captivating, often more vivid and colorful than reality itself. Even when something might seem plain at first glance, a painting infused with emotion can transform the ordinary into something extraordinary. An example is Studio Looking (2021), where a blank canvas leans quietly against a wall as if waiting silently. A black power cord, plugged into a nearby socket, gently loops around one corner of the canvas, extending toward a hairdryer at the other end. The nozzle of the hairdryer rests on a small wooden shelf, pointed at the canvas as if responding to the silent anticipation of the blank space before it.

工作室观察 Studio Looking

布面油画 Oil on Canvas

121.92 × 91.44 cm

2021

Through her meticulous depiction, translucent glass vessels, such as various glasses and jars, take on the role of different characters in everyday drama: the crystal clarity and sense of harmony in Glistening Days (2022), the communal feeling of the neatly lined-up items in Graduation Sale (2023), and the soft, diffused colors in Afternoon in early winter (2024). Huang recreates these vessels' translucency, hollowness, and reflective qualities as a classic still-life subject with her delicate, intimate gaze and hand movements. Her mastery of translucent textures also extends to the use of semi-transparent layers, as in American Cucumber (2023), where loofahs, daisies, and the shelf label "Chinese Okra" overlap translucently, with the interplay of cucumbers, loofahs, and okra subtly hinting at differences in identity.

闪光的日子 Glistening Days

亚麻布油画 Oil on Linen

60.96 × 76.2 cm

2022

黄宝莹 Huang Baoying

毕业清仓 Graduation Sale

布面油画 Oil on Canvas

60.96 × 60.96cm

2024

早秋的傍晚 Afternoon in Early Winter

亚麻布油画 Oil on Linen??

60.96 × 76.2cm

2022

黄宝莹 Huang Baoying

美国黄瓜 American Cucumbe

布面油画 Oil on Canvas

152.5 × 101.5cm

2023

Huang Baoying's tempera paintings are also making their debut in this exhibition. This ancient medium dates to the Middle Ages and is distinguished by its soft colors and tactile qualities that convey warmth, setting it apart from oil and acrylic paints. The tempera triptych To observe the bottom of the bathtub in three ways (2024) developed from a single photograph. For Huang Baoying, observing a photographic reference allows her to transcend many limitations of live observation, expanding the experience through repeated viewing of the image and multiple perspectives in the repeated depiction of the scene.

The triptych reminds me of the "symmetrical" multi-panel practice, such as Jeff Wall's use of triptychs to display "one" photo: Stairs and Two Rooms (2014). In the left picture, a man sticks his head out from behind a half-open door, with his eyes closed as if he wants to hear something; in the middle picture, the door in the left picture is closed, and the stairs and corridor outside the door occupy most of the picture; the right picture presents a symmetrical indoor space, with a door on each corner, a picture frame hanging on the left wall, and a dark-skinned man in a nightgown lying on a bed in front of the right wall, supporting his head with one hand and looking straight out of the picture. The same camera lens cannot simultaneously appear in the space of these three pictures. Still, the wall intentionally gives the pictures a sense of coherence. It places these three pictures in the same field of vision, thus allowing viewers to transcend the rules of physical viewing.

黄宝莹 Huang Baoying

杰夫·沃尔 Jeff Wall

In another diptych exhibited this time,A Long Goodbye (2024), the switching between two perspectives conveys the artist's reluctance to leave her old home and her expectations for her new home during her most recent move; this move is unique among the many moves she has made during her nine years of studying abroad because it finally means a relatively stable and relaxed state. In the new sense of stability given by the new home, the daily life in Huang's paintings will also undergo changes that transcend the previous understanding of displacement.

策展人????????????

CURATOR

Ling Gu is a De Ying Curatorial Fellow. The reader of 2022-2023 inaugural De Ying Curatorial Fellowship, Future Projects, collects her recent research-based writing A Conversation at an Ordinary Art Shop | The Survival Kit of Arbre in a Glocal Contemporary Art Ecology in China.

Ling has over fourteen years of working experience in culture and arts communication and management, honed through roles at the Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai, where she was head of marketing and communications; as head of digital arts at the British Council, China, and, most recently, at the Design Society, Shenzhen, where she was the Head of Communications at since 2015. She offers content interpretation and communications consultancy for multiple professional art institutions. 

In the course of previous institutional roles, she organized cultural events and forums on behalf of West Bund (Shanghai), Art Basel (Hong Kong, OCAT (Shenzhen), and the Design Weeks in Shanghai and Shenzhen; which has also led to several opportunities for developing cross-cultural projects with partners, including the Dutch Culture Center, Shanghai; Hugo Boss Asia Art, Jarman Award Screening Tour in China, UKNOW.org.cn, 2015 UK-China Year of Cultural Exchange, and the V&A Gallery. Ling is an independent curator, and her recent exhibitions include Maomao Xu: Peep Bubble (TANK Shanghai).

Ling is also an active writer, translator, and editor, and throughout her career has been a regular contributor to multiple domestic and international art publications. She was the editor for Randian, a bilingual contemporary art website and magazine. She translated the book Curatorial Challenges – Correspondence between Hou Hanru and Hans Ulrich Obrist (2013) among other publications. Ling was the editor for the book of artist Li Mu’s project papers titled A Man, A Village, A Museum (2015); and Semantic Satiation, a special issue of the Shanghai-based magazine Art World (2017). She is also co-hosting One Leaf Folded, a podcast on books and reading experience. Ling has recently hosted a series of art writing workshops as an educational program for university students. She endeavours to explore the possibilities of writing contemporary art.