What To See - Fog
Guo Tianyi
郭天意
Production date
2012
Object Detail
Media
pencil on paper
Measurements
100 x 80 cm
Notes
Working with the simple medium of pencil on paper, Guo Tianyi depicts glimpses of his everyday life with subtle variations and gradations of tone. Crumpled pieces of paper, discarded bottles, folded bedclothes, the light in a corner of an empty room; each carefully composed and deliberately cropped view is rendered in exquisite detail.
Guo Tianyi believes that the subject of landscape is important, and in 2012 he created a series of works depicting scenes inspired partly by photographs and partly by his imagination. What to See—Fog (2012) depicts a stand of trees half obscured by fog, captured by the soft shading of Guo’s pencil, their bare branches like lace against a cold grey sky. High in the topmost branches is a solitary bird’s nest. It’s a melancholy view that is typical of the winter landscapes of northern China, when smoke rises from bonfires in the fallow fields and the entire vista is tinted with the nuanced shades of grey that one sees in ink paintings. Beyond Guo Tianyi’s bravura technical skill, these works are extraordinarily evocative – you can almost smell wood smoke, and hear the rustling of leaves underfoot.
This series takes the elements of wood, earth, and water, rendering them as traces of light and shadow. The English title is rendered as ‘What to See’, but the original Chinese may also be translated as ‘What One Sees’, or even ‘How One Sees’. The artist’s intense concentration on observational drawing is, therefore, not simply an exercise in representation, but more like an exhortation instructing the viewer in ‘how to see’: it is a reminder that the ordinary aspects of the world are filled with unexpected beauty.
Guo Tianyi believes that the subject of landscape is important, and in 2012 he created a series of works depicting scenes inspired partly by photographs and partly by his imagination. What to See—Fog (2012) depicts a stand of trees half obscured by fog, captured by the soft shading of Guo’s pencil, their bare branches like lace against a cold grey sky. High in the topmost branches is a solitary bird’s nest. It’s a melancholy view that is typical of the winter landscapes of northern China, when smoke rises from bonfires in the fallow fields and the entire vista is tinted with the nuanced shades of grey that one sees in ink paintings. Beyond Guo Tianyi’s bravura technical skill, these works are extraordinarily evocative – you can almost smell wood smoke, and hear the rustling of leaves underfoot.
This series takes the elements of wood, earth, and water, rendering them as traces of light and shadow. The English title is rendered as ‘What to See’, but the original Chinese may also be translated as ‘What One Sees’, or even ‘How One Sees’. The artist’s intense concentration on observational drawing is, therefore, not simply an exercise in representation, but more like an exhortation instructing the viewer in ‘how to see’: it is a reminder that the ordinary aspects of the world are filled with unexpected beauty.
Accession number
2012.022