Huang Saifeng was born in Shanghai, China, in 1983. He studied at the Fine Arts Academy of Shanghai Normal University in 2003 and received his MFA from the Department of Oil Painting at Shanghai Theatre Academy in 2014. He currently lives and works in Shanghai.
Artist Huang Saifeng’s practice consistently moves along the boundaries between the virtual and the real, the visible and the concealed, memory and oblivion. In reconsidering the enduring question of pictorial space, he has developed a distinctly personal approach. His Inframince Light Folds series pushes the expression of the “void” in painting to an extreme. Through successive washes of specially formulated mineral pigments, he builds up multiple layers, while flowing folds of light divide and reshape the pictorial space, ultimately creating a multidimensional spiritual realm upon a two-dimensional surface. This “void” is not an absence, but rather a visual interpretation of the Daoist concept of “emptiness without nothingness, where true emptiness gives rise to wondrous existence.” The atmosphere within the paintings flows like air and light—seemingly intangible, yet all-encompassing.
The light in Huang Saifeng’s paintings never derives from a physical source; instead, it serves as a medium through which the inner spirit is revealed. His understanding of light originated in a personal experience during his early years, when a power outage plunged his rented room into darkness. Relying on his memory and familiarity with the space, he felt his way through the room until he found a candle. At that moment, he came to understand the profound connection between physical space and memory. The warm, diffused glow in his paintings thus becomes a metaphor for memory: rather than illuminating the external world, it awakens forgotten traces of life. The overlapping layers of light resemble the hazy aura of memories gradually settling over time.