Han Qing
I am infatuated with the night light. Humans are born with a natural attraction for the tragic – much like the moth that is drawn to the light which eventually causes its demise, we cannot help but be drawn into pain and suffering. Life is like travelling at night - it could be a dark hell, or it could be a glorious heaven.
Han Qing
The paintings by Han Qing (1965, China) show the city’s streets by night. With the bustle of modernization, Chengdu, like so many other Chinese cities, is changing at a fast pace; high-rises shoot upwards as the traffic grows increasingly busy. Yet much of what can be so ugly during the day can by the nightly light of lampposts, head lights and window displays attain a certain beauty. With his portrayal of the ‘light of the streets’, Han Qing shows the transformation of an ugly, everyday reality into a mysterious nocturnal landscape.
