In walking into the Dohjidai Gallery one was overwhelmed by the sense of space within these Chinese/Mongolian border landscape paintings by Zhai and strangely they reminded one of the Australian desert mulga country in that countires outback which stretches for hundreds of kilometres in every direction.

It appears on this trip to Kyoto that several of the exhibitions one has come across, more by accident of finding them than design, a kind of resurgent interest within the traditions of past/present landscape artworks, but imbued within them a developing neo western/eastern idiosyncratic praxis and as evidenced within this exhibition by Zhai, who continues to increase the audiences store-house of memory of how one can experience and build on this contemporary genre of art.

Zhai’s large painting gives the viewer an elevated perspective of the landscape thus allowing the eye to roam, seeking out points of reference through this vast monotonous panorama, that contains the sensation of the cruelty of sameness, it is a disorientating experience, like vertigo because the senses become confused in trying to contemplate ones insignificance to this seemingly endless landscape. What adds to this giddiness is the minimal signs of detritus from other forms human experience within that enormous terrain, especially the small road in the very foreground of the painting.

This large painting by Zhai is very likeable because it taxes ones memory of what does one make of such terrain, and whilst in the gallery it was observed that a group of people within the space, seemed to have a very confusing time in understanding such unpopulated landscape.

That is what the sublime in landscape painting should achieve, confront the independent memory of the audience, make them uneasy, for nowadays technology tends to give us a false sense of security with its seemingly endless stream of mostly mindless, useless information, constantly bombarding one’s memory from an variety of electronic sources, it’s like one now lives in video of loop of worthless information.

But here within this large landscape Zhai deconstructs this seemingly mindless world of electronic imagery and brings ones thinking into focus, whilst challenging one’s memory and makes them reflect with the most basic artistic tools being sumi-e brush, inks and paper; this is not the art of consumption in landscape painting but one that triggers remembrances, as well as creating new ones for the audience to ponder on.

There is other paintings within this exhibition worthy of comment but the large one is uncompromising, it’s not doctored to pretty colours to make it a commodity, nor sentimental, but rendered as it happens from the Zhai’s memory, each watery trace is placed with the overall intention of the artist in mind which is to bring a familiar remembrances into a inky reality for the audience to move out into uncharted thinking horizons within ones memory, it’s what good successful landscape painting might be experienced as an image. 

作者：翟健群