ARTIST 艺术家
EXHIBITION 展览
SUPPORT 支持
Nightfall Epistle / Curatorial Text
Gao Jiangbo
Nightfall Epistle always points to an aesthetics of suspension, as embodied by the doves and apples in *Imagination of Descent I & II*. Premonition is embedded in the starry night beneath a bright full moon in a state of positive-negative tension. Through “the envelopment of the visible by the invisible”, the concealment and manifestation of all things interweave within the mutual penetration of light and darkness—a chiasmic interplay—that gradually draws near and settles in the viewer’s field of vision.
Featuring new works alongside pieces from his past three series, this exhibition presents 20 works by Lai Chongcheng. The intertwined forces of “dissipation” and “reshaping” converge into an overarching narrative of “dissolution”. Classic art historical motifs including snakes, apples and conch shells are stripped of their original textual contexts, such as the Eden narrative, and reintroduced into the canvas as independent forms. Branch-like serpentine shapes wind through plant root systems; the fractal, spiraling structures of conchs fragment into spreading color blocks and rugged snow-capped peaks; the wings of Icarus are frozen within the void outlined by pale madonna-blue silk. Such dissolution is not a misreading of classics, but a reconstruction of art historical memory into nourishment for premonition, oscillating and reverberating endlessly across his paintings.
Elements within the canvas descend into reality amid the imagination of dissolution. Human figures recede behind animals and still lifes, enclosed by flourishing vegetation, as metaphorical carriers evolve into mediums of premonition. Faded snake sloughs, scorched trees and fissured conchs offer new directional cues for the currents of transience and dissolution. From the physical convergence of humans and conchs in *The Temptation of Saint Anthony* to the functional implication of a conch dwelling hinted by faint footprints in *The Hermit’s Hut*, the Northern Renaissance tradition of probing truth through meticulous detailing is reborn in Lai’s paintings in a renewed visual language. As Merleau-Ponty noted in *Phenomenology of Perception*, “night strips vision of its primacy, compelling the body to turn to more primal senses such as touch and hearing”.
From his earlier series *Twin Nights* to **Letters from the Night**, Lai continuously interrogates the essence of night. The compelling power of night explains the artist’s deliberate turn to the lengthy, intricate craft of classical painting. This shift stems not merely from a personal absorption and re-examination of art history, but also as a resistance against the erasure of embodied experience in the cyber age. The classical technique of layered glazing and subtle highlighting is akin to drawing tangible objects from the void of night, relying heavily on intuition and indirect sensory perception. Why are cardinal red and madonna-blue so perfectly suited to his palette? Perhaps within the primordial darkness of art history’s distant nights, such choices carry no nostalgic sentiment, but rather signal an ontological return to painting itself. The inherent meaning of painting originates from the materiality of pigment, rather than superimposed conceptual ideas. The sacred and solemn hues of blue and red—symbolizing heaven and blood—have always resided within the intuitive darkness.
For Lai, “night” functions both as a core theme and a creative methodology. In his early practice, his exploration of classical subjects refined the literary dimension of his painting. Through quotation and expansion of specific figures and allusions, he established an interrogative mode of viewing. While his earlier works lingered within the symbolic legacy of classical iconography and literary references, his new pieces fully internalize formal strategies including symmetrical division, internal-external nesting, positive and negative space, and structural isomorphism into this interrogative viewing system. In this sense, night—as both subject and method—corresponds to the inherent indirectness and ambiguous readability that define the evolution of his practice.
The titular work *Letters from the Night* epitomizes this nested, microcosmic mode of interpretation, illuminating the extended metaphor of the “letter”. The intertextuality between blank letter paper and moonlit scenery mirrors a contemporary existential predicament: an overabundance of information paired with a vacuum of meaning, fostering a state of “giving without substance”. We can no longer rest easy beneath the neon afterglow of digital light, as insomnia and round-the-clock revelry numbing our aesthetic sensibilities instead. Here, the realism of glazing merges with free lyrical expression. The crumpled texture of letter paper, diffused halos, and the gradual tonal transitions of mountains and waves all become material manifestations of premonition, encapsulated within poetically rendered realism.
Works including *The Tower*, *Inspiration and the Writer* and *The Sorrowful Monkey* correspond to three major signifiers in Lai’s early creation: objects, humans and animals. These motifs anchor multi-dimensional viewing perspectives, their significance extending far beyond inherent symbolism, deepening continuously throughout the process of dissolution. *The Tower* constructs ambiguous narration through shifting visual scales: clusters of clouds surrounding the spire resolve into flocks of doves as the viewer draws near, crafting a layered visual journey and renewed interpretive pathways.
As a recurring title across his oeuvre, *Inspiration and the Writer* traces narrative shifts between old and new works—from a writer coexisting with symbolic elements within a single canvas, to a figure engaging in intertextual dialogue with the entire exhibition. Painting’s narrative scope expands beyond individual pieces to the whole exhibition and his ongoing creative practice, forming a polyphonic chorus of interconnected themes and imaginations. In *The Sorrowful Monkey*, animals serve as allegorical mirrors of humanity, embodying ineffable psychological undertones absent from human figures. His subsequent Icarus series further evolves this device: bird wings woven from madonna-blue silk elevate animal imagery from mere reflective mirrors to silhouettes of omen and premonition.
“A tonsured monk, his face half-discerned, wanders hesitantly along the shore. Surging waves billowing like distant sails gaze upon jagged reefs, as a dark curtain descends, concealing a storm spreading from the horizon to the vault of the sky, poised to engulf the monk’s fragile figure. Yet amid the storm’s densest gloom, a rift of clear sky breaks through, halting the encroaching freeze of ultimate darkness.”
During exhibition preparation, Lai repeatedly referenced Caspar David Friedrich’s *The Monk by the Sea*. Crafted with quiet precision nearly two centuries ago, this masterpiece depicts nature’s overwhelming grandeur and beauty, evoking a premonition of peril to confront and subdue human hubris amid the early Industrial Revolution. **Letters from the Night** extends this very sense of premonition, seeking to instill humility amid today’s fast-paced era through tender yet startling visual poetics. The letter, much like the colossal full moon suspended in mid-air, stirs quiet unease while illuminating message bottles washed ashore by the rising tide. It grants us the power to gaze deeply, and offers solace in equal measure.
Text by Gao Jiangbo
策展人手札
文/周颖
Gao Jiangbo
Nightfall Epistle always points to an aesthetics of suspension, as embodied by the doves and apples in *Imagination of Descent I & II*. Premonition is embedded in the starry night beneath a bright full moon in a state of positive-negative tension. Through “the envelopment of the visible by the invisible”, the concealment and manifestation of all things interweave within the mutual penetration of light and darkness—a chiasmic interplay—that gradually draws near and settles in the viewer’s field of vision.
Featuring new works alongside pieces from his past three series, this exhibition presents 20 works by Lai Chongcheng. The intertwined forces of “dissipation” and “reshaping” converge into an overarching narrative of “dissolution”. Classic art historical motifs including snakes, apples and conch shells are stripped of their original textual contexts, such as the Eden narrative, and reintroduced into the canvas as independent forms. Branch-like serpentine shapes wind through plant root systems; the fractal, spiraling structures of conchs fragment into spreading color blocks and rugged snow-capped peaks; the wings of Icarus are frozen within the void outlined by pale madonna-blue silk. Such dissolution is not a misreading of classics, but a reconstruction of art historical memory into nourishment for premonition, oscillating and reverberating endlessly across his paintings.
Elements within the canvas descend into reality amid the imagination of dissolution. Human figures recede behind animals and still lifes, enclosed by flourishing vegetation, as metaphorical carriers evolve into mediums of premonition. Faded snake sloughs, scorched trees and fissured conchs offer new directional cues for the currents of transience and dissolution. From the physical convergence of humans and conchs in *The Temptation of Saint Anthony* to the functional implication of a conch dwelling hinted by faint footprints in *The Hermit’s Hut*, the Northern Renaissance tradition of probing truth through meticulous detailing is reborn in Lai’s paintings in a renewed visual language. As Merleau-Ponty noted in *Phenomenology of Perception*, “night strips vision of its primacy, compelling the body to turn to more primal senses such as touch and hearing”.
From his earlier series *Twin Nights* to **Letters from the Night**, Lai continuously interrogates the essence of night. The compelling power of night explains the artist’s deliberate turn to the lengthy, intricate craft of classical painting. This shift stems not merely from a personal absorption and re-examination of art history, but also as a resistance against the erasure of embodied experience in the cyber age. The classical technique of layered glazing and subtle highlighting is akin to drawing tangible objects from the void of night, relying heavily on intuition and indirect sensory perception. Why are cardinal red and madonna-blue so perfectly suited to his palette? Perhaps within the primordial darkness of art history’s distant nights, such choices carry no nostalgic sentiment, but rather signal an ontological return to painting itself. The inherent meaning of painting originates from the materiality of pigment, rather than superimposed conceptual ideas. The sacred and solemn hues of blue and red—symbolizing heaven and blood—have always resided within the intuitive darkness.
For Lai, “night” functions both as a core theme and a creative methodology. In his early practice, his exploration of classical subjects refined the literary dimension of his painting. Through quotation and expansion of specific figures and allusions, he established an interrogative mode of viewing. While his earlier works lingered within the symbolic legacy of classical iconography and literary references, his new pieces fully internalize formal strategies including symmetrical division, internal-external nesting, positive and negative space, and structural isomorphism into this interrogative viewing system. In this sense, night—as both subject and method—corresponds to the inherent indirectness and ambiguous readability that define the evolution of his practice.
The titular work *Letters from the Night* epitomizes this nested, microcosmic mode of interpretation, illuminating the extended metaphor of the “letter”. The intertextuality between blank letter paper and moonlit scenery mirrors a contemporary existential predicament: an overabundance of information paired with a vacuum of meaning, fostering a state of “giving without substance”. We can no longer rest easy beneath the neon afterglow of digital light, as insomnia and round-the-clock revelry numbing our aesthetic sensibilities instead. Here, the realism of glazing merges with free lyrical expression. The crumpled texture of letter paper, diffused halos, and the gradual tonal transitions of mountains and waves all become material manifestations of premonition, encapsulated within poetically rendered realism.
Works including *The Tower*, *Inspiration and the Writer* and *The Sorrowful Monkey* correspond to three major signifiers in Lai’s early creation: objects, humans and animals. These motifs anchor multi-dimensional viewing perspectives, their significance extending far beyond inherent symbolism, deepening continuously throughout the process of dissolution. *The Tower* constructs ambiguous narration through shifting visual scales: clusters of clouds surrounding the spire resolve into flocks of doves as the viewer draws near, crafting a layered visual journey and renewed interpretive pathways.
As a recurring title across his oeuvre, *Inspiration and the Writer* traces narrative shifts between old and new works—from a writer coexisting with symbolic elements within a single canvas, to a figure engaging in intertextual dialogue with the entire exhibition. Painting’s narrative scope expands beyond individual pieces to the whole exhibition and his ongoing creative practice, forming a polyphonic chorus of interconnected themes and imaginations. In *The Sorrowful Monkey*, animals serve as allegorical mirrors of humanity, embodying ineffable psychological undertones absent from human figures. His subsequent Icarus series further evolves this device: bird wings woven from madonna-blue silk elevate animal imagery from mere reflective mirrors to silhouettes of omen and premonition.
“A tonsured monk, his face half-discerned, wanders hesitantly along the shore. Surging waves billowing like distant sails gaze upon jagged reefs, as a dark curtain descends, concealing a storm spreading from the horizon to the vault of the sky, poised to engulf the monk’s fragile figure. Yet amid the storm’s densest gloom, a rift of clear sky breaks through, halting the encroaching freeze of ultimate darkness.”
During exhibition preparation, Lai repeatedly referenced Caspar David Friedrich’s *The Monk by the Sea*. Crafted with quiet precision nearly two centuries ago, this masterpiece depicts nature’s overwhelming grandeur and beauty, evoking a premonition of peril to confront and subdue human hubris amid the early Industrial Revolution. **Letters from the Night** extends this very sense of premonition, seeking to instill humility amid today’s fast-paced era through tender yet startling visual poetics. The letter, much like the colossal full moon suspended in mid-air, stirs quiet unease while illuminating message bottles washed ashore by the rising tide. It grants us the power to gaze deeply, and offers solace in equal measure.
Text by Gao Jiangbo
策展人手札
文/周颖
“夜晚来信”始终指向一种悬坠的美学，正如《下坠的想象》Ⅰ和Ⅱ中的鸽子和苹果。预感以一种正负差的形式镶嵌在皓月当空的星夜当中：通过“不可见对可见的包裹”，事物的隐匿与显现，正在光明与黑暗的相互渗透中交织（Chiasm），逐渐逼近、并降落在观众们的瞳孔当中。
本次展览呈现了包括新作在内的，赖崇铖过去三个项目中的20件作品。「逸散」与「重塑」编织合流成“消融”的线索。蛇、苹果、海螺，这些经典的艺术史元素，被剥离其文本原典（如伊甸园叙事），转而以“独立的形态”介入画面：树杈般的蛇形蜿蜒于植物根系间，海螺的分形旋转结构破碎为色块的蔓延和雪峰的崎岖，伊卡洛斯的羽翼定格在圣母蓝绸缎的虚空轮廓中。此般消解并非对经典的误读，而是将艺术史的记忆重构为“预感”的养料，并在画面中不断振荡和回想。
画面的元素也在“消融”的想象中坠入现实。人物形象退隐于动物和静物、并在植物的包围中，喻体逐步升格为预感的灵媒：掉色的蛇蜕、燃烧的树木、裂变的海螺，分别为“流转和消融”的方向提供了新的指引。从《圣安东尼奥的诱惑》中人与螺的实体相交，到《隐士屋》中依稀可辨的脚印所暗示下的螺屋功用，“北方文艺复兴”那通过修饰细节叩问真相的传统，正在崇铖的画中以新的形式重生。梅洛旁蒂在知觉现象学中提及“夜剥夺了视觉的主导，从而迫使身体转向触觉听觉等更原始的感知方式”。从“双夜”到“夜晚来信”，赖崇铖持续着对夜的叩问，“夜”的强辩解释了艺术家毅然转身古典技法的冗长和复杂。其原因不仅仅是爱好层面对艺术史的消化与反刍，更是一种对当下“肉身化场域在赛博时代消失”的抵抗。提白罩染的古典画法就像从夜的虚空中探囊取物，更加依赖直觉和间接的感受，主教红和圣母蓝为何贴切？或许在艺术史的旧夜或原始汤里，这种选择无关怀旧，而是对绘画本体论式的回溯：绘画原本的意义本就生于颜料的物性，而非观念的附加。神圣与威严的蓝与红，天与血，本就留存在直觉的黑暗里。
“夜”在崇铖的创作中是主题，或许也是方法论。赖崇铖创作的早期，在对“古典题材”求索中提炼出了自身绘画的“文学性课题”，通过对具体的形象和典故的引用和拓展，建立了一套提问式的观看方式。如果说彼时的崇铖还在经典形象和具体典故所带来的象征遗产中徘徊的话，那么新作中，“对称分裂”、“内外嵌套”、“正负空间”、“形象同构”等，给绘画形式、绘画技法、语言话题的发展已然内化到了其“提问式观看”的内部。某种意义上，“夜”作为主题亦作为方法，也自然对照着崇铖一直以来绘进化的内在性、间接性和暧昧的可读性上。譬如作为展览主题来源的单作《夜晚来信》，以小见大般嵌套式的阅读或许可以解释“信”的引申义：无字信笺与月亮场景的互文，映照着的一种当代的存在主义困境：信息的过剩与意义的真空正在制造一种“给予却无内容”的状态。我们似乎无法在电子色的余晖中安睡，而失眠和彻夜的狂欢正替代性的休克“美的神经”。此时罩染技法的写实同构于写意，信纸的褶皱、光晕的氤氲，山与浪的渐变、在名为写实的诗意中，皆成“预感”的物质性显影。
《塔》、《灵感与作家》、《悲伤的猴子》分别对照着赖崇铖早期创作中：物、人、动物等形象能指，三种元素的存在设定了一种“多维”的观看锚点。它们的意义并不仅仅止语在其形象本身背后的意义，而是在“消融”的过程里逐渐丰满。例如“塔”中了一种观看的尺度造成的模糊叙事：远看是密布在塔周围的云团，随着观众视线的逼近而显形为鸽子，让人自然的带入观看距离制造的视觉动线中，形成新的阅读阶梯。而“灵感与作家”作为沿用多次的题目，联系着旧作和新作中的叙事维度的变化：从“与灵感元素共生于画面中的作家”，到“与其他展览作品相互文的作家”。绘画的叙事从单幅画面里溢出至展览甚至阶段性创作的群体，话题的复调交响在延绵的话题和想象中。再回看“悲伤的猴子”：彼时赖崇铖画面中的动物作为人的“寓言镜像”、衬托出人物形象所无法言明的心理特质。随后的伊卡洛斯组画则在此基础上用物象的形态流变概括了动物：圣母蓝绸缎所构成的鸟翼，发展了动物作为言说主体的作用，把仅仅作为镜像的动物形象上升为预兆的轮廓。
“面庞若辩的僧侣如游魂般在海边踌躇，摇曳远帆般的激浪和嶙峋的岸礁相互张望，暗幕低垂掩藏着身后的风暴从天际线蔓延至天空的咽喉，几乎要吞没僧侣本就微小的身影。而恰在风暴的浓密处，一抹晴空拨云而来按停了即将凝固的至暗。”
值得一提的是，备展期间崇铖曾多次聊到弗里德里希的《海边僧侣》，这件近200年前的佳作用近乎静默的精准，描绘着自然的威严与美丽，用风暴将至的预感提醒一种危险，回应和震慑着彼时工业革命初期人类试图征服自然的张狂。“夜晚来信”像是对这种预感的延展，试图在过速的当下时空中用温柔和骇然提醒我们谦卑。“信”好似悬在空中那巨大的满月，令人心慌不安的同时也照亮了被涨潮冲回的漂流瓶。给予我们凝视，同时也给予我们慰藉。
⽂/⾼江波