Guo Haiqiang’s new exhibition at Mocube is titled Lingering Clouds, a phrase drawn from a poem by Tao Yuanming. It refers to clouds gathering and lingering without dispersing, coming to a pause — but, more deeply, it also speaks to the stilling of one’s gaze and thoughts.

There is a kind of unadorned strength in Guo Haiqiang’s paintings. Without relying on excessive concepts, he uses imagery, color, brushwork, composition, and a deeply gentle emotional warmth to invite us into the work.

Guo Haiqiang has painted the Zhongnan Mountains for many years. In the beginning, he traveled through the mountains sketching from life, painting directly before real landscapes. Whether expansive or densely layered, his paintings naturally developed their own sense of depth, already carrying a relief-like quality. Given his academic training in sculpture, he was never fully satisfied with the conventions of flat painting. Later, he began placing actual grasses and plants into his mountain compositions. At the seams of these collages, colors and forms spilled beyond the rigid rectangular frame, becoming irregular in shape and taking on the forms of nature itself. These experiments all seemed like a kind of struggle — with the mountains, but even more with himself — as he sought a more direct, even tactile, way of approaching the mountains in his mind.

In recent years, his paintings have changed again. The mountains remain, but they have become even more seamless and monumental in their density. And then, there are the clouds. Within these cloud-and-mountain compositions, the imagery suddenly becomes distilled and singular, each form entirely itself, endowed with a complete sculptural presence. Layer upon layer of brushstrokes are built up almost as though sculpted into being, evoking even the textures of stone and metal.

Nothing remains except clouds and mountains. The mountain is heavy, grounded, and stable — it is the root. The cloud is light, drifting, and immaterial — it is breath, or qi. The two are constantly interwoven: clouds encircle the mountains, while the mountains inhale and exhale the clouds.

The meaning of “lingering” is not simply stillness. Rather, it is about allowing everything to settle into quietude, so that both vision and spirit may come to rest within this world composed of mountains and clouds. Guo Haiqiang’s previous solo exhibition was titled Seeing Mountains — one first sees the mountain. Lingering Clouds comes afterward: quietly lingering after seeing the mountain, dwelling among clouds and peaks.

The philosophy of Lingering Clouds lies in its contemplative gaze upon clouds and mountains, conjuring an emptied stretch of time — a state of mind in which, after a long journey, the painter finally arrives at a place where his gaze may simply come to rest.

(Text by Dai Zhuoqun)