Night and Day: Between Light and Darkness
The landscape has always been a recurring theme in Kang Haitao's painting. Where he differs from many landscape painters is that Kang Haitao’s gaze is constantly focusing on the tranquil night. The paintings mostly depict forests, streets, buildings, windows, and other such everyday scenes, with many of the motifs derived from photos he takes with his phone. It is worth noting that we almost never see figures in his landscapes. According to the artist, he has rarely painted people, even in his student days, due to the influence of Giorgio Morandi and Avigdor Arikha. In his eyes, the lack of people in a painting does not imply a lack of people in the landscape. There may be someone somewhere in the depths of the landscape, perhaps obscured by a shadow, or swallowed by a bright light.
Kang Haitao was born in a small town in Chongqing. An introvert, he grew accustomed to solitude early in his life, and was always transfixed by the sights and natural scenery around him. These would not only go on to become the subject matter in his paintings, they would also become his motivation as a painter: “Every time I return to a quiet little alley, I find that what moves me the most are things like the shoe inserts and orange peels left out to dry on the balcony. Maybe a little chair, under the sunlight, so tranquil. That simple beauty moves me. In this way, I returned to those first things that moved me so much, and began to paint the life around me.”
These may be candid photographs, but we can see that whether in terms of composition or exposure, there is a high level of craftsmanship here. The night is Kang Haitao's most constant motif. Various scenes (such as trees or buildings) take on a unique atmosphere and feel when set against the night. The stillness, tranquility and mystery are what draw in the artist’s gaze. He often wanders around alone, ruminating on the air and light in solitude. But he has no intention of being subsumed in it. He does not ascribe to the gray and gloom of the ordinary, but instead wants to capture the unexpected glimmer of beauty. When that moment comes, he may not have time to adjust his lens, but he can extend the exposure. For this reason, the light seems to particularly stand out, sometimes even holding up the entire structure of the picture. This brings us back to an interesting point, which is that while what the eye sees is not entirely real, neither is photography. What Kang Haitao captures serves to magnify this unreality in a way.
We can see that Kang Haitao's paintings encompass at least three forms of light: the first is the light inherent to the landscape (such as street lights, lights behind windows, moonlight, and sunlight); the second is the light of the camera (which naturally includes the painter’s gaze); and the third is the light bestowed by the painter as he adjusts the previous two light sources in the depiction process, the (pure) light of the painter’s gaze. Interestingly, these three forms of light do not clash in Kang Haitao’s painting, but instead resemble a form of stacking and proliferation. The act of capturing in the photograph appears quite important here, from framing to exposure. Much depends on this mechanical eye. No matter how strong the original light source, or how clear the landscape appears in the painter’s eyes, the naked eye has its limits. He cannot penetrate all of the rich layers of the scene in front of him. At this time, the question of whether to raise the camera, and of how exactly to focus on it, depends on the artist’s temporary perception. Sometimes he raises the camera absentmindedly, or by chance, capturing just a temporary, partial slice of something, but this mechanical construct focuses our gaze, while stripping away the surrounding scene.
There is a powerful lighting system at work in virtually every one of Kang Haitao's pictures. When it isn’t constructing a perspective structure, it is filling the entire picture to form a mottled plane of light and shadow. Since most of the pictures depict night scenes, the lighting tends to soften the contrasts of light and shadow, which is what sets him apart from other painters who depict street scenes, such as Giorgio de Chirico or Edward Hopper. Under their brush, light and shadow are clearly delineated, but Kang Haitao’s lighting brings out richer layers in the night.
Trees are the most frequent motif in Kang Haitao's painting. Even when lit by the moonlight (or street lights), trees at night appear like a blurred mass. Their layers cannot be seen with the naked eye alone. Under the exposure of the camera, however, those layers are revealed. For example, in the recent works Trees (2015–2016) and Trees (2019), we can see that in the process of translation into painting, Kang Haitao preserved or even magnified the traces of exposure. The sky has become gray, and blotches of emerald shimmer among the once dark trees. These two paintings are both closeups, their partial depictions entirely relying on the framing of the lens. Sometimes, he renders the scene in black and white, as in another painting from 2019 also titled Trees, in which the stand of trees occupies the entire image. The photograph was probably taken at an upward-facing angle, and the gray-white patches irregularly scattered in the painting are the exposed sky, as well as the organs through which the picture breathes. Whether it is the emerald green emerging under the light, or the scattered patches of grayish white, they provide the picture with a sense of life between the light and darkness. Here, they are no longer constructs of photographic technology, but have been liberated by the artist’s depiction, and release a unique dynamicity as subjects.
Paradise, completed in 2020, depicts the front of a building. The building virtually fills the entire picture. The orange line at the edge in the upper right corner is the sky at sunset. The rest of the picture is in shadows. Though he has abstracted the architectural part into stacked rectangle and square color fields of different sizes, we can still make out its basic outline. The most striking aspect of the picture is certainly the two gold color fields in the middle. They were likely originally warm-color lights in the building, but under the artist’s brush, they have become pure color fields or patches of light. This interferes with the viewer’s gaze, forcing us to leap out of the painting’s representational atmosphere, and to stand outside the picture. This approach is also found in Nocturne (2018), in which the entire picture is embedded into a door frame. Unlike Paradise, the painter and viewer's position here is not the exterior of a building, but its interior. Through the door frame, and the window frame in the background, we see a dense, lush wood under the sunlight. Like the two gold color fields in Paradise, the most striking aspect of Nocturne is a translucent, rectangular orange color field that occupies the window frame above the door. I believe that before painting, the artist did not edit the photograph using software, but added or enhanced this during the painting process. This implies that these aspects of both paintings are rooted in the painter's subjective will. Interestingly, it is not entirely dependent on the lighting of the original photo. It is almost as if it is grafted onto the picture, and could fall off or be peeled off at any moment. One could say that the artist has presupposed such an act, and this brings a level of depth and dynamicity to the picture. It is no coincidence that gold and orange are manifestations of light. This also brings us to revisit the unnatural and artificial nature of the structure of light and shadow in Kang Haitao's painting. In his own words, this is more like a psychological image, or psychological color.
Though he is highly dependent on photography, Kang Haitao holds fast to his role as a painter; the weight of his practice stands firmly on painting and its unique texture. Even when drawing on photography, he uses methods of depiction to resist simple “re-creation.” In this process, medium and form have naturally become the main elements under his consideration. It is just that medium and form here are not entirely removed from or antithetical to photography (image). To the contrary, he often uses manual (painting) methods in an attempt to approach a photographic (image) style. In this process, rendering on the image level is still one method, but for him, experimentation in medium is more important. His painting style derives to a great extent from his unique painting method.
Transparency and Opacity
Kang Haitao studied at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute Oil Painting Department. He became interested in Chinese painting techniques while he was a student. In those days, he was particularly enamored of Ming dynasty painter Gong Xian’s “ink blotting technique.” After graduating at the turn of this century, he moved to Mianyang, where he taught classes and researched painting techniques. It was during this time that he began to experiment in the depiction of night landscapes, and discovered that the substance and opacity of oil paint made it difficult to achieve his feel for the night. After countless failed experiments, he suddenly remembered Gong Xian's “ink blotting technique.” The semi-transparent nature of the “ink blotting technique” was evidently better suited to expressing his experience and understanding of the nightscape and its light and its structure of light and shadow.
The “ink blotting technique” is difficult to grasp, but is not actually a complex technique. Simply put, it consists of adding layers of ink over each other. Generally, it starts with a thin layer of diluted ink. Once the first layer is dried, the second layer is added, followed by more layers. The ink can be blotted and washed many times, and color can even be added, followed by more blotting and outlines. Gong Xian's “ink blotting technique” places particular focus on shifts in the feel of the ink. In a letter to Hu Yuanrun, Gong Xian wrote: “The painter must have a sense of this blurring, this undifferentiated chaos. Without that, there is only brushing technique. True undifferentiated chaos is when there is no difference between brush technique and feel of the ink.” As an ancient technique in Chinese painting, the “ink blotting technique” relies on a set of strict brush and ink traditions. Kang Haitao had no intention of returning to traditional ink painting, which meant that his first challenge would be how to transform this technique without losing that sense of “undifferentiated chaos.” Kang Haitao quickly discovered that he could replace ink with acrylic, as both are water-based. Based on this premise, he used acid free board in place of canvas, as the way the paper absorbs water is better suited for the “ink blotting technique.”
In fact, looking simply from the angle of painting technique, the “ink blotting technique” bears a resemblance to tempera techniques from late Medieval and early Renaissance painting, the difference being that tempera techniques emphasize transparency in the picture, while the “ink blotting technique” is somewhere between transparency and translucence; and tempera painting often has clear, distinct outlines, while any outlines are lost in the repeated blotting and stacking of ink in the “ink blotting technique.” For this reason, simply in terms of formal analysis, the “ink blotting technique” is closer to Heinrich Wölfflin’s concept of the “painterly.” But while the “painterly” uses layering to highlight the materiality of the paint, the repeated layers in the “ink blotting technique” do not cover each other, but permeate each other, and thus constantly readjust and activate the layers of brushwork and the material properties of the paper.
From another perspective, the artist’s choice of this kind of painting technique is rooted in the needs of the motifs of the “nightscape” and the “night forest scene.” In fact, in Kang Haitao's eyes, the night sky is itself a semi-transparent presence. This is particularly the case with the trees he sees. Set against the moonlight or the streetlights, it is difficult to find their clear outline. In other words, it is a setting where “you and I become indistinguishable.” The way that the paper board absorbs water provided another form of material support for the depiction of this kind of scene.
In this sense, we could say that Kang Haitao has found a critical point between form and image. On one hand, he has preserved the basic look and texture of the image, while on the other, he has released the properties of the medium to the greatest extent. In this process, he has already “betrayed” photography. The images or texture details that emerge from those layers of stacked brushstrokes are something that cannot be achieved, or reproduced, by the lens. As mentioned previously, this is primarily rooted in the artist’s perception of the real scene, such as the trees set against the moonlight or streetlights (Trees, Chaoyang Arsenal, Trees), or the patchy wall under the light (Memory of Light, Wall). The layers of the trees and the textures of the walls already possess traits of removing boundaries and undefined forms, and these traits accord with the uncertain layers of brushstrokes in the “ink blotting technique,” because they all have a temporal nature, and are all in a state of weak motion. This demonstrates that even though the pictures are rooted in photography, he is to a certain extent still faithful to his own naked eye.
The difference is that, as seen in another series relating to architecture (as in Nocturne and Paradise), while the picture maintains some faint characteristics of abstraction, the details are depicted as magnified low-resolution pixels or a mosaic effect. Simply put, this painting encompasses at least two forms of vision. If we suppose that these are the results of seeing from two different perspectives, then the former is a distant view, while the latter is an up-close view. Of course, the rendering of the latter is not necessarily based on sight; it is quite possibly a depiction rooted in understanding and recognition. The result of distant viewing is non-transparent, but the abstracted form of the real scene happens to embody the transparency and solidity of its structure—indeed, the artist has never ceased his experiments in abstract form over the past decade (as in Unexpectedness of Form (2017) and Diary (2018)). The result of up-close viewing should be clear and transparent, but the “idealized” rendering gives it a sense of opacity and thinness. In the dialectic, wavering, and alternation between transparent and opaque, thin and solid, Kang Haitao has produced an aesthetic imagery and psychic experience of visual hallucination with a strong individual style. This is why the pictures appear at first to fit our visual experience, but under close inspection, we discover that there is always something “a little off” about them. It is more like a visual experiment. We could even take the view that “Kang Haitao's painting faces and captures a world that needs ‘imaging,’ rather than ‘representation.’ In this world, what we see is not the object, but ‘seeing’ itself.” Just like the landscapes depicted by 17th century painters using the camera obscura, what we see in the picture “is not how the painter sees the landscape, but how the painter sees ‘seeing’ itself.”
In this light, we find that the original concept of the “landscape” has actually been extracted—or we could say that it is an expansion of “landscape.” Here, the social scene has replaced the natural landscape in the eyes; the image has been replaced by information and knowledge. Kang Haitao may not be satisfied by pure experimentation on the levels of image, form, technique and vision, but he has still not completely departed from the landscape surface. That is to say, even while engaging in contemporary exploration of landscape, that exploration begins with the original definition of landscape and the surface appearance of the picture. In essence, what he truly wishes to probe and practice is the question: what is contemporary landscape?
“Landscape in the Mist”
In the Book of Genesis, it is said that “In the beginning, the Earth was a formless void... and then there was light... God separated the light from the darkness, calling the light day, and the darkness night.” Kang Haitao's painting is the opposite: it is only because there was day and night that light and darkness became separated. There was light, and then there was the formless void. In this way we can imagine how Kang Haitao's pictures are always murky, ambiguous and formless, yet there is always a trace of light. This is his perception of modern life, “As if there is a sympathetic ray of light cutting through the wet, hazy mist.” For him, this is not just the night itself; it is an allegory for the contemporary.
It reminds me of the classicfilm Landscape in the Mist by Greek director Theodoros Angelopoulos. As I see it, this name may be the most fitting description of Kang Haitao's works. This film is the third installment in Angelopoulos’ “Trilogy of Silence.” The other two are Voyage to Cythera and The Beekeeper. As some have noted, these three films all probe the same question: where is the final place of rest? Though Kang Haitao has removed any narrative from the picture, even his uninhabited places engage the same pursuit. This is something that sets them apart from historical landscape painting.
The term “landscape” first appeared in 1549 in the writings of humanist thinker Robert Estienne, referring to a genre of painting, rather than the actual pastoral landscape. It emerged during the Renaissance. This awareness did not exist before then. Landscapes are not seen in paleolithic painting, nor in Egyptian decorative painting. The landscape occasionally appears in Greek pottery and Roman painting, but as a mythical backdrop in service of the painting’s theme, just an annotation to the text. Interestingly, the economy in the Middle Ages shifted to the countryside, but landscapes still did not appear in the paintings of the time. Even in various manuscripts and illustrations, the natural landscape only appears in symbolic or allegorical form. According to Régis Debray, the original term “paysage” shares a root with “paysan,” or “peasant,” and even represents lowliness and ugliness. For this reason, in the eyes of the humanists, to draw close to nature implied an affront against classical culture. Only the Flemish, with their coarse character and lowly gaze, would treat the landscape as an independent presence. Indeed, it was the Flemish and the Dutch who thoroughly developed landscape painting. For this reason, one could say that in a certain sense, the painter’s passion for the landscape is determined by the labor involved in art itself. For instance, the way in which labor draws close to the land is marked by tones of landscape practice, while the supple feel and slowness of pigments mixed in linseed oil require a patience akin to farm labor. By the mid-20th century, the invention and widespread usage of acrylic paint shortened the duration of painting or labor, and landscape painting was no longer able to adapt to the slow pace of pastoral life, becoming instead more in keeping with the rushed rhythms of the city.
The difference is that though Kang Haitao uses acrylic paints better suited to urban rhythms, he has chosen slow “rustic” painting techniques. He may live in the city, but his gaze falls not on the frenetic urban scene, but on the light and aura of the “indistinct” and “forgotten” night and mist, trees and shadows. Though his pictures are all derived from quick candid shots, what he captures is neither eternity nor escape, but a fleeting sojourn, a temporary disorientation. In this light, we finally understand what it is that is “not quite right” about his pictures. That is because he is not conveying or producing mist—he doesn’t even like mist—but instead working to penetrate the mist. Instead, he is embedding himself in the mist as a means to penetrate the mist, producing a “halo” or “undifferentiated chaos” as a way to penetrate the din.
In Landscape in the Mist, Angelopoulos crafted a story of two children coming of age on a journey. The landscape that slowly resolves through the mist is the homeland in their hearts. In Kang Haitao’s uninhabited “landscapes in the mist,” the mist is not a manifestation of nature, but a concept, a form of disorientation. What he depicts and seeks is not a journey to the distance—the walls, trees and skies that repeatedly appear in the picture serve to block that path to the distance—but an aimless penetration of that disorientation. Thus, his painting is not so much a depiction of nostalgia as it is an internalized realism. Just as we are unable to stand apart from the mist-like post truth society, perhaps it is only within the mist or disorientation that we can penetrate the rumors or lies, and penetrate our own inner minds.
February 19, 2022
