Distant Figures Have No Eyes

2025
Organic pigment on 640 g/m² Saunders paper
56 x 76 cm

In Linquan Gaozhi (林泉高致)—a collection of notes by the Song Dynasty painter Guo Xi (郭熙)—the artist reflects upon the unique principles of perspective in Chinese landscape painting. In contrast to the Western linear perspective, Guo’s approach creates a spatial relationship with a scene through multiple viewpoints simultaneously, allowing the viewer to dwell within and travel through the painting—wandering its paths, resting in its pavilions, and gazing out from its heights. This kind of perspective displaces the static eye of the viewer and situates them in an active relationship to the work. “A mountain in the morning has a different appearance from in the evening”, Guo writes. “Bright and dull days give further mutations…Thus can one mountain combine in itself the significant aspects of several thousand mountains.” These drawings—pure pigment on thick, scroll-like paper—are rooted in these ideas, exploring the nature of perspective and our creative ability to inhabit it. “Distant mountains have no texture strokes”, Guo continues, “distant figures have no eyes. They do not really lack them, but merely seem to do so.”