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.

This space is inspired from Cao Jigang's work <Snow>, the painting itself is an extremely refined yet extremely rich piece. It is ethereal yet solid, flat yet extremely spacious. My installation extends the feeling of emptiness beyond the original dimensions of the painting, to form a passage conceptualized as a field of snow at the end of which can be found a simple bench on which a viewer can sit in order to contemplate the desolate snowy plain and the ghostly peaks beyond. The installation was designed to integrate seamlessly with the painting, becoming part of it without violating its purity and simplicity, while unfolding the empty space within it, releasing the cold and desolate landscape from its canvas and into our own world.