“The Task of Alchemy”, Pocono Zhao Yu’s solo exhibition at Arch Gallery, presents a subtle sense of time traveling. As the title of the exhibition alludes to, it is as if the smelting and mysterious deeds of some spiritual objects. Within the whisper that fluttering outside of time, this enormous task is under the invisible dome of time.

When looking at Guo Yujian’s works, what have been depicted is always in a state of flow, and the secret words that are related to each other become images that avoid us and approach us. The work that takes shape on the canvas in our sight is yet to come, in transition, about to embrace change, and it will not push us away until the feeling is fulfil.

Since then, I have tried to let daydream-like imagination seep into the picture, and those earlier, more symbolic images have also been naturally diluted. Perhaps, it is precisely because of the temperament that seems to be infiltrated by the picture and some image contents that are contrary to reality that cause the association like a dream.

When the painting is really close to us, the first thing that appears to our eyes is this Le cimetière marin[1] written by Valéry in 1922. The curators Hu Yihang and Zhang Tingzhi, together with artist Guo Yujian, divided the exhibition “Dangerous Complicity” in the gallery into three chapters with words and symbols: imagination, a plateau, and a theatre.