Tian Zhaoting: In Broad Daylight
Beijing
12th April -17th May, 2025
Tian Zhaoting: In Broad Daylight
Tian Zhaoting: In Broad Daylight
Artist: Tian Zhaoting
Exhibition: In Broad Daylight
Duration: 12th April -17th May, 2025
Opening: 4 PM Saturday,12th April, 2025
The exhibition title In Broad Daylight gestures toward the artist’s objective and unshielded engagement with natural reality. Through translucent gauze and layered chromatic washes, Tian constructs a visual field in which exposure and concealment coexist in a delicate dialectic. The Chinese phrase “化日” (huà rì, transformed daylight) not only evokes a sense of radiant transparency but also resonates with the needle-and-thread forms newly appearing in his work—gestures that stitch together the inexpressible. Drawn to the mythical and surreal creatures of the Classic of Mountains and Seas (Shanhaijing), Tian finds in them a release valve for emotional tension and a way to anchor his imaginative dissonance. This experience parallels standing outdoors at noon, under the sun’s piercing light: one's presence becomes undeniable, while privacy dissolves. In response, the artist’s gaze turns to the fantastical, as a psychic retreat from the blinding clarity of the real.
In Tian’s canvases, fantastical figures and metaphoric hybrids of nature—layered through gauze and diffused color—echo the Shanhaijing’s otherworldly imagery: strange beasts, illogical realms, and the blurred thresholds of truth and myth. These works become at once reflections of reality and allegories of the uncanny. Through subtly shifting light and shadow, he invites viewers to confront hidden complexities that exist even under the brightest of skies—offering a landscape where the seen and unseen intertwine.
Tian Zhaoting was born in 1988 in Zibo, Shandong, currently teaches at the School of Fine Arts, Beijing Film Academy. He received his BFA in Painting from the Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University (2011), was a visiting scholar at Boston University College of Fine Arts (2012), and earned his MFA from Tsinghua University (2014).
Tian’s artistic practice is grounded in plein air sketching, through which he treats “landscape” as a cultural medium—where realism and fantasy overlap. Often beginning with a fleeting sensation or visual impulse, he allows painting’s internal logic to lead him toward restrained yet enigmatic worlds. The combination of translucent acrylics and gauze lends a sense of softness and breathability to otherwise stark suburban or industrial scenes, subtly tempering their inherent coldness. His multilayered compositions evoke temporal displacement, while the hovering haze stretches the viewer’s visual memory toward distant pasts—or futures that feel equally ancient.
