Positives and negatives converge into screens and slides, while montages bring forth
emerging landscapes. Sigrid Sandström conjures a grove of peaks within the white
cube of Perrotin Shanghai. The mountains, with their enigmatic and intimate play of
light and shadow, unveil a boundless panorama. Her deft brushstrokes open up
various interpretations of abstraction and landscape, as streams of meaning flow
ceaselessly onto the canvas. This union of intrigue and profundity encapsulates the
very essence of Sandström’s latest work.

Should it not be shrouded in silence, exploring abstract landscapes as texts has
become standard practice. Through quantitative and qualitative approaches adopted
from geography, sociology, and philosophy, sensations and dreams are meticulously
delineated by the boundaries of common sense and logic. Images are thus burdened
with missions and values, while openness and prospective character are gradually
drained by the pursuit of "what" and "why." No longer is experience prioritized in the
exploration of image and the space within it. Bereft of metaphysics and sociopolitical
discourse, depicting nature and intuition risks becoming pleasing yet insubstantial
diversions within the realm of streaming media.

As sensibility is relentlessly refined and reactivated in this age of AI reproduction,
Sandström’s work may appear as old wine in new bottles, yet it subtly reveals the
artist's keen insights: "The flow as a damned and blessed torrent. Forgiving, moving,
forgetting, erasing—the fatigue of the eternal now."¹ How should painting exist as an
image? With this question in mind, Sandström distills the "where" and “how" through
the elemental forces of mountains, water, earth, and sun. Amid the flow, Sandström’s
works illuminate humanity and the world as earthshine.

The Pyramid
"Afterimages," a culmination of Sandström’s study on glacial landforms and canvas
space since 2000, initially suggests an anti-space quality. The flat shapes and
layered compositions seem to indicate an impenetrable surface. However, through
permeation, leakage, and wrinkling — treatments reminiscent of traditional Chinese
landscape painting — each brushstroke glimmers like jade in the light, transforming
otherwise dull stone walls into crisp veils. Layer by layer, abstract terrains and water
flows unfold into profound depths. Delicate yet expansive, this visual effect arises
from Sandström’s masterful balance of flatness and spatiality, deftly achieved
through the modulation of distance.

Claude-Étienne Savary once remarked that to truly behold the majesty of a pyramid,
one must neither approach too closely nor retreat too far. Building upon this notion,
Immanuel Kant contended that proximity may hamper comprehension, while
excessive distance impairs apprehension. He thus posited an optimal distance, a
perfect balance between these faculties. As American scholar John Sallis noted,
most landscape paintings struggle to meet this ideal distance.² Indeed, capturing
landscapes in verisimilitude often eludes this delicate balance. Nevertheless, this
challenge can be surmounted in more abstract renderings. Through refined
modulations of both physical and psychological perspectives, Sandström's work
appears to have discovered a “correct distance” that reconciles such complexities.
In terms of composition, the artist adopts techniques akin to that of traditional

Chinese landscape painting, bringing forth a remarkable harmony between object
and space. The composition is defined by spontaneous, concise blocks of color,
while the finer details resemble delicate dyeing techniques. The edges of various
hues merge and mingle, creating a misty, ethereal effect. Once the paint is applied, it
is left to flow with the canvas's resting position, giving rise to a secondary layer of
artistry shaped by the forces of time and gravity. Dyeing and appropriating the
canvas, Sandström emulates the subtle, improvisational rhythms of wood, stone,
clouds, and water. This cross-media approach produces textural strokes, where
originally flat color blocks acquire spatial folds, transforming the depicted objects into
both mountains and rocks.

Leaving blank space is a time-honored trope for manifesting poetic ambiance, and
Sandström's judicious use of “nothingness” is key to balancing the flatness and depth
of the work. While the artist does not explicitly draw from any traditional landscape
painting theories, the “Afterimage” series, through the artist's exploration of materials,
nature, and painting, resonates with François Jullien's summation of classical
Chinese painting: "opening things onto their absence... painting them only indexically
so that they appear 'present-absent' at once."³

This philosophically charged space extends beyond mere technical control of
structure and texture; it hinges on the creator's transcendence of the self. Beyond
orchestrating the 'I' within the canvas space and the painted scene, Sandström
invites varying distances between the viewer and the canvas, the viewer and the
image, as well as the viewer and the creator. Embracing the ever-shifting
perspectives of different observers, she fosters an individualized inner distance. The
work simultaneously embodies the perspective of towering mountains up close and
the vast expanses reaching into the horizon. The paintings, suspended in the gallery
and viewable from both front and back, grant viewers a real-time experience of
moving through the mountains, while the wall-mounted pieces, varying in perspective
and scale, create new distances in the intervals of movement. In the personalized act
of entering and exiting the scene, viewers continually complete their own spatial
landscapes, infinitely approaching but never fully reaching the artist's vision of the
land. Through differences, displacements, and subtle adjustments, these landscapes
truly become, in Sandström's words, "a space which a person measures oneself
against.”⁴

The Ocean of Solaris
In his 1961 novel, Polish science-fiction author Stanisław Lem envisions a planet
named Solaris. This celestial body orbits two suns—one red, the other blue. Solaris’
surface is a vast, ocean-like expanse, covered in a gelatinous substance that ebbs
and flows like tides, at times serene, at times tumultuous. These wave-like forms,
resembling living entities, cascade forth “massive shapes as if in avalanches,” each
mirroring the other as its "isomorphic counterpart." 5 In their ceaseless
metamorphoses, they mimic the thoughts and emotions of their human visitors,
ultimately materializing human consciousness in various forms to engage with them.
Though Solaris seems to be an ocean, it is, in essence, more comparable to the
human mind.

Sandström's works, such as O, Dusk, and Time Shedder, resemble a pilot's fleeting
glimpses of Solaris. These non-narrative depictions of nature transcend language to
become vessels of memory, time, and life. As the artist observes, "painting is free to
suggest things, open things up and maybe generate visual reactions where the
optical and haptic visual reactions proceed the cognitive ones." These creations arise
from "an objectless sense of longing, a desire for some kind of re-direction towards
somewhere beyond my immediate self, somewhere 'out there.'"⁶ Through images,
this internalized elsewhere morphs into a tangible source of mindfulness. By
grappling with themes of nature and the silent human presence, it speaks of the
inexplicable tremors that humanity has yet to fully comprehend.

An uncharted realm to explorers, “Glacier” imparts a chilling and distant quality to
Sandström's works. Her landscapes, unlike the tranquil and serene unity of man and
nature in traditional Chinese landscape paintings, evoke a wilderness free of human
centricity. These scenes are primordial, sublime, and detached. Sandström makes no
attempt to domesticate the mountains and rivers; instead, she faithfully captures their
inherent peril and majesty. In place of direct depiction, human presence emerges
through the nuanced connection between the viewer and the landscape: humans,
being part of nature, navigate the dual roles of explorer and the explored. The
presence of man reveals itself and fluctuates in the viewer's struggle between self-
affirmation and the uncertainty of the external world, laying bare the insignificance of
humanity in the midst of the landscape.

“Afterimages” carries the latent currents found in Timothy H. O'Sullivan's Hot Spring
Cone, Provo Valley, Utah (1869) and Fissure Vent at Steamboat Springs, Nevada
(1867)—a vast, immovable world fraught with daunting unknowns and moments on
the brink of collapse. Yet, it is precisely nature's unclaimed existence that allows it to
mirror human sentiment within its steadfast reality. Sandström captures this
paradoxical allure, projecting irrational emotions, desires, and longings onto these
landscapes. These feelings, akin to the afterglow upon the snow, warmed and
expanded by human presence, become a new light that illuminates the world. Its
origin and contours, however, remain perpetually elusive. This light in turn
transmutes into an eternal sense of lack, a ceaseless pursuit.

The multifaceted flow of time, along with the interplay between the eternal and the
transient, expands the breadth of the works, inviting moments of quiet reflection.
Land and mountains, still and solid, converge with flowing waters and fleeting
sunlight, delineating cosmic laws in their mirrored dance. "Time is ticking for me as
for a melting iceberg," 7 the artist muses, thereby imbuing space with a fluid axis. The
frozen past, briefly sealed within the canvas, flows anew with each observer's gaze,
merging into the ever-present now and the boundless future. These landscapes,
marked by the stillness or passage of time experienced by Sandström and her
viewers, ultimately become embodiments of time itself, turning into interims and
perpetual becoming.

Caspar David Friedrich once declared, “The painter should not paint merely what he
sees before him but also what he sees within him. If he sees nothing within himself,
then he should refrain from painting what he sees before him.” “Afterimages”
transcends painterly concerns. In its layered, Solaris-like silhouettes, it echoes John
Cage's sentiment: "Listening to it, we become ocean.” ⁸


Notes:
[1] Sandström, Sigrid. “Material Matters.” Sigrid Sandström, 13-14 Dec. 2018,
https://sigridsandstrom.com/2020-Material-Matters. “The flow as a damned and
blessed torrent. Forgiving, moving, forgetting, erasing - the fatigue of the eternal
now.”

[2] Sallis, John. Senses of Landscape. Northwestern University Press, 2015, p.
16. “Saveray’s comment is that in order to get the full effect of the pyramids’
magnitude, one must neither get too close nor stay too far away. Kant’s explanation
is that one must not get too close, because then comprehension is impossible, nor
stay too far away, because then apprehension becomes too distinct. In this case,
Kant supposes, there is a ‘correct distance’ at which a balance is achieved such that
neither apprehension nor comprehension is impaired.”
[3] Jullien, François. The Great Image Has No Form, or On the Nonobject
through Painting. University of Chicago Press, 2009, p. 9. “In opening things onto
their absence, in painting them only indexically so that they appear ‘present-absent’
at once.”
[4] 2024年4月30日与艺术家的邮件对话: “I think of landscape as a space which a
person measures oneself against.”
[5] [波兰]斯坦尼斯拉夫·莱姆. 索拉里斯星[M]. 陈春文,译. 北京：商务印书馆, 2005:
P181-182.
[6] 与马丁·赫伯特（Martin Herbert）的对话。【文章标题：采访，时间及具体出处
待贝浩登确认】
[7] 2024年6月8日与艺术家的邮件对话: “Time is ticking for me as for a melting
iceberg.”
[8] Cage, John. Empty Words Writings ’73-’78, (Connecticut: Wesleyan
University Press, 1981): 6. “Listening to it, we become ocean.”

Text by Luqi Wang
Translated by Lingxuan Tang