Qin Ni’s artistic practice begins with an introspective archaeology: with the rigor of an archivist, she transforms public knowledge systems into a private grammar, endowing invisible experiences with habitable symbolic forms. However, this exhibition, Groove as Interval, seeks to present a profound material turn in her recent work—a shift from the pure encoding of private experience toward a dialectical dialogue with material substrates, particularly wood.
The exhibition’s French title, Sous les Veilles du Bois, reveals the dual implications of this turn: “Veilles” refers both to the grain of wood and to the notions of “vigil” and “gaze.” It suggests that beneath the silent surface of wood lies another temporality, another stratification of memory. The artist is no longer merely an encoder but has also become a listener and interlocutor.
This dialogue unfolds through two complementary gestures: on one hand, she actively engraves (Gravure) with the blade, peeling back layers of pigment to reveal the wood grain beneath—an act that is both a physical uncovering and a decoding of hidden narratives; on the other, she preserves large expanses of raw wood grain on the picture plane, allowing natural textures to become the visual structure and narrative subject in their own right. Together, these gestures constitute a creative philosophy: within the dense fabric of private encoding (“groove”), she deliberately leaves intervals where matter itself is given voice (“as interval”).
Thus, the pictorial surface becomes a site of negotiation between two orders: on one side, the meticulously constructed, man-made logic of the image; on the other, the “geological strata” of the wood itself—contingent, marked by time, and shaped by its own growth. What the exhibition seeks to explore is the intimacy born of this tension: true inner space is not a closed fortress of symbols, but a dynamic field that dares to open itself to the “otherness” of matter and, through sustained dialogue with it, defines itself.
In Qin Ni’s recent works, wood grain is no longer a background to be subdued, but a participant in the co-construction of space. These natural textures, which resist complete encoding, interrogate any purely abstract order with their silent and resilient materiality, while also expanding the dimensions of “private space”—one that inhabits both symbols and the very breath of wood. This exhibition is a contemplation and articulation of this intimate complicity with matter.
Text/ Krish Liang
