Artist Residency｜Wang Hailin: Elongated Sense of Time

From September to November 2025, artist Wang Hailin completed a three-month residency at Leo Gallery's residency space in Shanghai.

 
On the second floor of a vintage villa at Ferguson Lane, Wang's work grew quietly. Sunlight streamed through old windows, illuminating her restrained brushstrokes and subtle layers of color. The autumn branches outside and the shifting light and shadow on Wukang Road merged into the negative of her images. Meanwhile, the canvases inside registered the recalibration of perception by a "returner."
 
 

Q: Could you introduce the theme of your residency at Leo Gallery and how this experience of "returning" became the starting point of your work?

 
Wang Hailin: This residency was a process of "re-adaptation." After six years away, returning to Shanghai left me with a strong sense of dislocation. Everything had become faster, denser, and more overwhelming. The familiar rhythm was gone. This discomfort - raw and real - became the starting point of my work. I didn't have a preset theme; I began from the feeling of "returning to the scene." Many images emerged from that sense of unfamiliarity. I wanted to capture the moments of facing the city again - confusion, hesitation, blur, or the feeling of being pushed along. My working method became more open. I let the work emerge naturally from daily experience. I wasn't painting "the return" itself, but the slow process of re-adapting and finding my own perceptual rhythm again.
 

Q: Your work moves between the figurative and the abstract, between recognizable scenes and blurred emotional boundaries. How would you describe your visual language to an audience unfamiliar with your work?

 
Wang Hailin: I am drawn to a state of "both resembling and not quite." It comes from real emotions in life: standing somewhere familiar yet feeling distant, unfamiliar, and out of focus. This sense of being caught between clarity and blur reflects my recent years of moving between cultures and constantly re-adapting. I don't paint this way to create mystery - it's because certain experiences and emotions are by nature unfixed. They flicker, shift, and sway inside. I want viewers to stand before my work and not rush to understand or find answers, but to first feel that slow, light, and uncertain breath.
 
Q: You mentioned that this body of work does not rely on clear narrative but focuses on experiences like "psychological distance" and "cultural dislocation." How does painting, as a visual medium, help you capture and express these elusive states?
 
Wang Hailin: Painting is dynamic. As I work, my emotions keep shifting - each brushstroke, each layer, can trigger a different feeling, or overturn the one before. The beauty of painting is that it can hold all these changes. It doesn't demand that I define myself in an instant; it allows multiple states to coexist on the same canvas. The shadow of an earlier thought intertwines with later revisions. Those layers, hesitations, overthrows, and re-dos form the inner time of the work. I love this elongated sense of time. Unlike photography, which freezes a moment, painting stays with me through change, preserving what is unstable, wavering, and even contradictory. That is the freedom painting gives me.
 
Q: "Fragmented observation" is a key method in your practice. How do you choose these fragments? Why can such small details carry so much emotion and even grand narratives?
 
Wang Hailin: These fragments are close to ordinary experience. We rarely see the full picture, but it is precisely in the small things that overlooked sensitivities, emotions, or atmospheres appear. I don't paint the fragment itself - I paint the moment it touches me. That moment is the switch that starts my work. It reflects individual emotion and feeling more truthfully than any so-called "main subject."
 
Q: In your Corners of the World series, you engage with images of global disasters and conflicts, yet you do not depict the events directly. What is the thinking behind this "distant viewing" and translating them into personal emotional impressions?
 
Wang Hailin: I don't paint war directly because I am not a witness. Recreating scenes would feel inauthentic. Yet I am affected. Living in Germany, I am bombarded daily with images of conflict from news and social media. They accumulate into an unprocessed archive in my mind, creating continuous psychological pressure. So I paint not the events themselves, but the emotional traces left behind by that relentless bombardment. This distant, non-narrative approach reflects my honest position as an onlooker. Since I am not there, I don't pretend to be. I respond only with what I can touch.
 
Q: You've mentioned Susan Sontag's Regarding the Pain of Others as an influence. How did this book affect your approach to images of distant suffering?
 
Wang Hailin: What struck me most in Sontag is her frank exposure of the embarrassment, contradiction, and moral unease in "watching others' pain." She points out that images were once seen as truth records but can now be manipulated and no longer necessarily approach the truth. But a deeper influence came from her discussion of the onlooker's position - that a spectator can never truly enter the pain of others. This directly shaped my work. I don't paint the most dramatic scenes. Instead, I choose peripheral details: a broken piece of wall, a charred branch, a shadow. These small things are what I can honestly reach as an onlooker. My painting method grows from this incomplete, uncertain, even slightly ashamed position of watching from a distance.
 
Q: Having lived between China and Germany for many years, has this "in-between" state shaped a unique perspective for you?
 
Wang Hailin: This "in-between" perspective allows me to sense the different rhythms of the two cultures. It's like standing forever on a threshold - belonging neither to one side nor fully to the other. This "suspended feeling" once made me uneasy, but later I realized it gives me a special pair of eyes: I can see the structures behind what others take for granted. The more I paint, the more I recognize that this in-between state is exactly where my strength lies.
 
Q: What specific changes did the shift from Germany back to Shanghai bring to your "perceptual toolkit," such as sensitivity to color, light, and spatial rhythm?
 
Wang Hailin: Shanghai impressed me with its extremely high density of information. Its fast pace pushed my judgment of color, form, and composition toward a more "oppressive" expression. I began to pay more attention to the density of rhythm in the image, visual impact, and the compression of space - a sharp contrast to the calm and softness of Germany.
 
January 10, 2026