Brillance in The Dark

 

Text：Zha ba

 

In 1864, Emile Zola mentioned in a letter to a friend: (all works of art are like) a window open on creation; a kind of transparent screen is mounted in the window frame, through which we see the objects, more or less deformed – these changes correspond to the nature of Screen.

 

Zola then used the Screen metaphor to explain differences between classical, romantic, and realist representations (of life). Thus the classical screen was “... of a milky whiteness”, whose images appeared in piercing, dark lines. The romantic screen “let all the colors through”, alongside with “plenty of light and shade”, like a prism. The realist screen was “a simple windowpane, very thin and clear ... so perfectly transparent that the images come through and reproduce themselves afterward in all their reality”.

 

According to Zola's Screen theory, Lai Sio Kit’s last series Forest, approximately shows a combination of realism and romantism, with a great deal of wet colors and light and shade, and the images appear rather like the forests we behold.

 

If we say Lai Sio Kit previously installed a piece of transparent glass screen on the grid viewfinder attriubted to Albrecht Dürer, then in 2020, he installs  on it a piece of frosted glass with ‘texture’.  Here ‘texture’ does not refer to natural objects seen through the screen, but further refinement in artistic language.

 

 In 2020, departing from his usual colorful style Sio Kit creates his new collection of landscapes using monochromatic colors: the near-white white hue or near-black. By giving up colors, he opens up great possibilities for rich color variations in a single hue corresponding to the so-called ‘colorful black’, a motto upheld by clients (and imposed on designers) in the design sector.

 

 

In works depicting waterfalls, the white, silk-like brightness of the waterfalls makes the cliffs around look dark by contrast. However, within this dark, the cliffs show rich and varied colors. The two extreme hues, black and white, are well balanced in the whole painting. And within their respective color gamuts, effective color variations help keep this balance in slow movement, making it look static but is in fact dynamic, in a kind of slow motion.

 

Surprisingly, in several paintings about forests, a single color, the near-dark black hue, is used, successfully bringing out the more obvious wet. In a previous interview, Lai Sio Kit said that he was first touched by the forest during a visit in the rain, while feeling the sweat, rain or the mix of both – which he could not tell -- dripping down on the skin. This ambiguity in perception is now clearly represented as the wet and dark achieved through using a monochromatic color. 

 

Sio Kit’s works on brooks were basically operated around high-profile light colors, similar to Luc Tuymans' pale, washed-out palette.  Nearly all such paintings employ light white colors, which present landscapes as well as deft and fluid brushwork – well in between freehand and realist depiction.

 

Sio Kit’s new collection of landscapes in 2020 marks a breakaway from forests and mountain/rock landscapes that we usually see, and the result is: brush strokes more free and gorgeous. Upon leaving that piece of transparent glass screen symbolizing realism, we embrace a new world, which looks different yet gives us similar feelings.  It is sending vibrant waves to us through the screen set by the artist.

 

The exhibition title was inspired by two lines -- “white rock in dark blue water shines with brilliance, amid which swims a large carp” -- in Fan Niu Song (a herding song said to be created by Ningqi from the Spring and Autumn Period). The song came from a period just into agrarian civilization not long, from the previous forest civilization. Roughly according to the ancient lyrics, white rock in dark blue water looks more bright, brilliant.  That alludes to ‘bright in bright’, just like the ‘white on white’ and ‘black below black’ in Lai Sio Kit’s new works.