“I am less concerned with the moment sound is produced than with the moments ofpreparation and pause: fingers resting on the strings, breath slowly sinking, emotionquietly accumulating within silence…” — WU Haifeng

BONIAN SPACE is pleased to announce the opening of Fermata, the first soloexhibition by artist WU Haifeng, on view from May 22 to June 18, 2026. Curated byWANG Yaoli, the exhibition presents more than twenty recent tempera-on-panel worksby the artist. WU’s painting practice unfolds around questions of time, perception, andinward states of immersion. Through figures, spaces, botanical elements, and musicalreferences, he constructs pictorial environments that are gradually formed through theslow and repetitive layering characteristic of tempera. This process gives rise to arestrained and quietly suspended visual structure. His works attend to the subtlecirculation of emotion and consciousness within a temporality that resembles a state ofsuspension. Between reality, memory, and perception, WU’s paintings consistentlymaintain a subdued yet persistent internal tension.

The English title Fermata is derived from the musical notation indicating a sustainedpause, in which a performance is prolonged without a clearly defined point oftermination or resumption. This suspended temporality finds a subtle correspondence inthe states of WU Haifeng’s figures: absorbed in solitude, gazing, playing, orcontemplating, they appear to be situated in a moment that has not yet ended or fullybegun. The Chinese title "Kong Chu Yu Yin (Empty Space, Residual Resonance)" furtherintensifies this structure of absence and echo, as if sound has not ceased but continues toreverberate and dissipate within an open interval.

Musicality runs throughout WU Haifeng’s recent practice. Instruments such as thepiano, flute, and guitar function not only as pictorial elements but also as metaphors fortemporal flow. He consistently reflects on the relationship between music and painting:the former is transient and evanescent, while the latter arrests time within spatial form.His attempt is therefore to translate auditory experience into painting, so that soundexists within the atmosphere and rhythm of the image even before it is heard. InDrifting in Stillness (2026), the sound produced by a flute gradually transforms intowhite plum blossoms, which expand and proliferate upon entering water; here, sound istranslated into a visible trace, as if, once it leaves the body, it returns to the world inanother form.

If sustained engagement with Western classical painting has enabled WU Haifeng todevelop an understanding of structure, order, and a certain form of spiritualized seeing,then his re-engagement with his own cultural context has gradually brought forwardanother set of references—those of traditional Chinese aesthetics, including notions of“negative space,” “wandering perception,” and “borrowed scenery.” In contrast to themore centered and stable modes of viewing in Western painting, Chinese garden designand classical pictorial traditions emphasize shifting viewpoints, spatial concealment,and the gradual unfolding of perception in motion. This mode of seeing does notprivilege a single focal point, but instead forms a psychological space produced throughoscillation between stillness and movement. In WU’s work, these two visual traditionscontinuously interpenetrate: the structural logic of Western painting and the restrained,atmospheric sensibility of Eastern spatiality jointly operate within the pictorial field,producing both clarity of composition and a drifting rhythm of perception. The visual logic of Jiangnan garden culture has become an important source in WUHaifeng’s construction of space. In Hare and Taihu Rock (2026), a female figure ispartially concealed behind a Taihu stone, holding a bow and arrow, while the rabbitmotif references the pictorial schema of Magpies and Hare (1061) by Northern Songpainter CUI Bai. The work simultaneously retains the spatial principles of concealment,borrowed scenery, and openness characteristic of classical gardens, while integratingWestern pictorial concerns such as light modeling and spatial depth. The Taihu stonethus functions not merely as a regional symbol, but as a medium situated betweennature and artifice—connecting figures, vegetation, and space, and generating within thepainting a subtle and shifting atmospheric flow.

This attention to spatial relations and psychological states also extends to WU Haifeng’sdepictions of human figures. In In Between (2025), two women sit facing each other, yetare gently interrupted by a table and a floral arrangement; a gaze has already beenestablished, but the relational structure remains unconfirmed. One figure, shown withher back to the viewer, holds a mask but has not yet put it on, suspending bothauthenticity and appearance, self and other, within an unresolved moment. This interestin psychological space and “unfinished temporality” becomes more complex in Descent(2026): the internal structure of a piano cuts diagonally across the composition, dividingthe pictorial space into intersecting zones. A contemplative male figure, scattered sheetsof paper, and a translucent female presence together construct a field that hoversbetween reality and the subconscious. WU renders the “arrival of the muse” in a line drawing manner, making this moment of inspiration appear as a barely perceptibleapproach—emerging slowly within creative blockage and mental depletion. Driedbranches, suspended geometric forms, and a preparatory sketch for Magpies and Hare (2026) maintain the work in a state of instability, as if an emotion is graduallyaccumulating but has not yet been fully articulated.

The slow and repetitive working process inherent to tempera has profoundly shapedWU Haifeng’s painterly language. Each layer of application does not erase previousmarks; instead, pigments and brushstrokes compressed beneath the surface continue tore-emerge faintly from within the image. It is through this process that time is graduallysedimented into the painting itself. WU does not seek to construct a complete ordefinitive narrative. Rather, he invites viewers to linger within these slowly accumulateddetails, to encounter a temporality that diverges from everyday rhythm—like the faintvibration that remains in the air after sound has dissipated.