PIFO Gallery is delighted to present the self-titled exhibition of artist Kang Haitao. His recent works on paperboard presented in the exhibition shows Kang Haitao’s gradual trajectory towards a simpler, more abstract route of self-derivation. Not only the simplified depiction of daily scenes, but also showing more interest in simple scenery with more abstract attributes.
Landscape painting is Kang Haitao’s way of depicting the world: the sight of distant mountains in the soundless dark, the lonely, fuzzy lights of a gas station, a dim corridor, an outer wall cast in light and shadows… These quiet dreamlike yet somehow ordinary scenes unconsciously reveal a complex, deep emotion and anxiety in mind.
From his initial nightmarish nightscapes, to the abstract or faded everyday landscapes, and to his recent imagistic landscapes that absorb the sophisticated experience of viewing pre-existing imagery, all these are the landscapes seen through the eyes of a restless witness. When this ‘sense of hopelessness’ destroyed all the passions for witnessing distinctive ‘meanings and values’, these ‘landscapes’ are the spiritual narratives, which are full of wisdom and passions, in this aphasic era.
Kang Haitao’s is recent works, such as Memory of Light and Wall, have represented the new horizon of Post-70s Art in China, with his deep inner experience, his tactful sentiments and attitudes, as well as his calm, magnificent and mature expressions.
