TENSIONS emerged during my second year working in Beijing, at a time when I was questioning the very nature of what a painting could be. The series reflects five seasons: the familiar cycle of spring, summer, autumn, and winter, alongside a fifth—pollution—an invisible season that once enveloped the city.

Rather than relying solely on pigment, the works explore tension and shadow. Fabric is stretched across the surface and cut under pressure, allowing the blade’s angle to produce ellipsoid cavities that pierce the canvas. These openings transform the paintings into spatial objects, where protrusions and voids cast shifting shadows that evolve between day and night.

Each piece carries the emotional tone of its season, from lighter chromatic atmospheres to the densest darkness of pollution. At the time, I wondered whether such a condition could ever be reversed—an irony, perhaps, as Beijing’s skies today are far clearer than a decade ago.

Yet TENSIONS does not impose a fixed meaning. The works merely suggest a direction of thought; interpretation ultimately belongs to the viewer, whose own perception completes the cycle of tension between light, shadow, and imagination.