In experimental project “7 Rooms”, 2017, artist Cao Jigang and I were exploring different ways of creating dialogue between art and design, to provoke different mindsets towards Chinese painting aesthetic. Cao Jigang’s work transcends the limits of either Chinese or Western painting. He follows the legacy of his predecessors in the Chinese literati painting school while employing the egg tempera medium to depict an ultra-personal yet lonely world which he called “a deserted and desolate uninhabited place, without flowing water or blooming flower”. In response, I designed five installations as "gateways" which were intended to act as bridges between the artwork and audience, enticing the public towards the appreciation of an ancient aesthetic philosophy which "changes the way we see and bring back the classics", said curator Xia Kejun.

<Day and Night> represents the closest collaborative effort between the two artists in the course of this project. Cao Jigang created three horizontal scrolls which combine to form a 24-metre-long panorama tailor made for the fourth room of our exhibition. In the centre of the room is situated a small pavilion on which people are welcomed to rest amidst the mountainous landscape paintings. The pavilion itself is designed according to traditional Oriental architectural design. The lighting within the room alternates periodically between light and dark, incorporating the cycles of day and night, further enhancing the environment of our dreamlike Shan-shui Garden.

We agreed to approach this exhibit from two opposing directions as coinciding with the Yin-yang principles of Shan-shui. I was to represent the lighter aspects, while Mr. Cao took upon himself the task of manifesting the darker ones. This created a perpetual tugging match between the murky and the clear, the gloomy and the lustrous, enhancing the influences of both the light and dark, the day and the night. Gazing out from the pavilion the paintings appear as windows cut into the wall, the desolate landscape of this alternate world radiating through into our own, while spectators gaze on from the shelter of the pavilion, protected by an elegant dragonfly, perched atop a solitary barren rock.