As a leading figure among the new generation of artists, Huang Yishan has his unique artistic philosophy and methodology.
The title of the exhibition, “Interior Punctuation”, serves as a framework of Huang’s art practice. “Interior” refers to the recurring settings of his works—spaces where narratives unfold. Yet unlike previous interior paintings that depict life and emotion, Huang’s interiors are more of rational investigations. He is more captivated by the narrative interplay of space, perspective, structure, and materiality, expanding the very definition of “interior painting” into a realm where pigment converges with material science, sculpture dialogues with spatiality, architecture intersects with engineering, and design fuses with objects.
“Punctuation”, however, carries multiple meanings in Huang’s work. First, it indicates the concept of ruler, reflecting the rational and scientific style that he inherits from classical painting—grid compositions, cartographic techniques, and linear perspective. Second, it also reflects the infiltration of contemporary elements such as vector graphics, virtual games, digital data, industrial modularity, and standardized color codes.
Additionally, “punctuation” also carries literary indication, embodying fractures and shifts in his works, such as abrupt wall corners, shifts in space and perspective, or layered techniques. The spatial changes indicate narrative changes, where new breaks, punctuations and contexts redirect a story, transforming Huang’s signature “paintings-within-paintings” into “stories-within-stories” that transcend time and space. Here, historical certainties become questions, periods turn to commas, and nouns shift to verbs.
Through these punctuations, Huang extends, critiques, and invents, allowing painting to transcend time and space, to go beyond reality and the present.
However, stories develop not only through plot but also through form and technique. Huang tends to reconstruct reality through abstraction and minimalism. His hyperreal materials exist as both image and substantial object, radiating an “aura” that is unattainable for mere image: restrained yet opulent hues, sedimentary and mottled textures—qualities akin to nature’s passage of time.
Unlike the neglect of “techniques” in modernism, Huang draws inspiration from classical philosophy, attaching much importance to “techniques”. In his works, techniques are not only approaches, but also content. Only the slow, meticulous and accurate labor could become rituals to channel the essence of the material. In other words, Huang has to work like a devoted, meticulous church sacristan, waiting piously and burnishing laboriously over and over, until persistence prevails.
This exhibition consists of nine sections, presenting over a dozen new works spanning from 2012 to the present. Structurally, it opens with Huang’s creation processes and experimental work, and concludes with self-referential metaphors distilled over decades. In between unfold his recurring themes: painting-within-painting, mirror-within-mirror, story-within-story, window and landscape—all interwoven with the close connection between material and narrative, space and craftsmanship, and the imprint of the southern region, urbanization and industrialization on the artist.
This telescoping curatorial approach intends to trace a direction, which was prefigured in Huang’s work Circular Wanderers (2008): back then, he was already more interested in painting’s enigmatic relationship with reality than mere representation or expression. His quest is to create something that assembles reality yet different, and thereby rebuild the relationship between viewers, paintings, and the real world.
Thus, painting becomes a labyrinth of possibilities—not solving life’s mysteries, but inviting endless exploration. Curator: Cui Cancan
