THE IDEA OF THE PAINTING HUANGQUAN

The concept of Huangquan comes from Chinese cultural imaginings of the afterlife.
Within this cultural framework, it is believed that after death, one travels to a place called Huangquan.
In this place, one arrives at the Naihe Bridge, drinks Meng Po soup, forgets the memories of one’s previous life, and then proceeds into the next reincarnation.
In the next life, one may return as a human, but one may also become another animal, or even an insect.
This endless succession of lives is known as reincarnation. Within this framework, life resembles a continuous cycle.
In the space called Huangquan, however, one seems suspended between life and death. It functions almost like a transitional state.
The previous life has already reached its conclusion and is no longer something to dwell upon, while the future life has not yet
begun.
It feels like a space, place, or environment in which life itself is allowed to remain suspended.
This kind of environment feels very close to the one I want to create in my own work: an environment in which life can be suspended.
Within such a space, life and individuality seem, perhaps, finally able to detach themselves from attachment to life and fear of death.
In such an environment, might a person be reduced to a purer form of soul? This is something I continue to think about.
The environments and landscapes I construct on some of my canvases may be partially based on my own imagination of
Huangquan: a place that feels dreamlike and familiar, yet somehow impossible to locate anywhere in the real world.
I am drawn to moments of trance—moments of becoming entranced by landscapes, by lights, fireworks, dreams, or even stories.
I think there is something extraordinary about such moments. They seem to offer another form of detachment.
In those moments, our sense of the present and the future both become blurred, and we are simply absorbed by that singular experience.
This sense of suspension created by fleeting moments feels very similar, to me, to the sensation that Huangquan evokes.
There is a saying that people live for just a handful of meaningful moments. It feels as though just having a handful of such
moments is enough to sustain a person through the long passage of time, allowing them to continue moving forward through an exhausted and weary life. I like this idea.
In relation to my paintings, I want to incorporate the emotional experience brought to me by these trance-like moments, while also creating an environment capable of evoking similar experiences.