Tang Contemporary Art is pleased to present artist Wu Yi's latest solo exhibition, “Love in Midsummer,” at 4 p.m. on August 23, 2025 at its Beijing 2nd Space. Curated by Cui Cancan, the exhibition features more than 50 works from Wu Yi's latest series, “Peach,” “Imitation of ‘The Legend of the White Snake,’” and “Prague.”

 

Midsummer Love

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I.

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In Chekhov’s short story The Kiss, a curious tale of love unfolds: at a ball in Tsarist Russia, a young officer wanders into a dimly lit room. A woman, as if she had long awaited him, presses a sudden kiss to his cheek. Realizing her mistake, she hastens away. Yet that brief touch leaves an indelible mark. For days he drifts in blissful reverie, until he can no longer resist recounting the moment. He recalls the hurried footsteps, the rustle of silk, the strains of music drifting from beyond the door; the warm, moist touch of lips; the fragrance of poplar, lilac, and rose in the air. He describes much, imagines more, and yet his telling ends swiftly—though he had believed it could last until dawn.

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At times, love is less a story than a sensation: the scent of air, the feel of dampness, the juiciness of summer itself. In Wu Yi’s new works, the “peach” carries this very metaphor. It serves as a token of the tale, a marker of seasonal rhythms and human desire, and a vessel for imagination. Its first association is with the season: each summer, as peaches ripen, they herald midsummer’s arrival. The air grows heavy with rain and humidity, and lives and moods shift accordingly.

Ancient thought reminds us that “food and desire are of the essence of human nature.” Among the few fruits once available, the peach was one of summer’s great pleasures: admired, tasted, savored in homage to the season. Thus, peaches appear throughout classical paintings and texts. Their distinctive form and flavor stir Wu Yi’s impulse to paint: the shy blush of a bud, the fine down, the supple fullness that recalls the feel of skin. Their taste is exquisite—juicy and tender, best when rinsed in well water, so that cool sweetness runs down the hands.

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In Wu Yi’s art, the peach can be both “seen” and “read.” In Chinese tradition, it holds many meanings: in Daoism, it symbolizes longevity and auspiciousness; in the Classic of Poetry, peach blossoms stand for love—“radiant, resplendent in bloom”; in Tao Yuanming’s Peach Blossom Spring, the peach grove becomes an emblem of seclusion, an idyllic refuge from the turbulent world.

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Thus, Wu Yi’s paintings—balanced between blessings of longevity and hints of desire—become refined objects of midsummer. Yet they differ from their ancient counterparts. Their forms are modern: Pop-inspired compositions, the language of flat abstraction. Their emotions are contemporary: shaped by daily experience, Western tales, fleeting metaphors. Wu Yi renders “fortune” and “auspiciousness” not as noisy exuberance, but as quiet joy and gentle peace, with a touch of serene detachment.

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Each time a peach ripens, it signals the start of a season. As if, with each summer, bare skin radiates warmth, and love stirs—quickened by the heat of the air, tempered by the cooling sweetness of its taste.

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II.

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In my memory, The Legend of the White Snake is inseparable from the rains of West Lake—perhaps because of that moment when Xu Xian shelters Bai Suzhen with an umbrella, their reunion after years, marking the beginning of a love story. Or perhaps it is simply that summer in the South is capricious: a sudden downpour can give way to sunshine, and emotions, like the weather, shift unpredictably.

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Beyond the iconic Broken Bridge encounter, the scene that lingers most vividly for me comes from Tsui Hark’s film Green Snake. In it, the monk Fahai attributes his faltering discipline to the two serpents and enlists Xiaoqing to tempt him. The water boils, passion overflows, and Fahai is utterly undone. This fleeting “dew-like love” became, in my imagination, the perfect metaphor for instinct and desire, freedom and restraint, pleasure and longing. Only then did I realize: in childhood, The White Snake seemed a tale of good versus evil; in youth, it revealed itself as a tragedy of love entwined with confinement, desire bound by prohibition.

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Like Wu Yi, generations of readers have grown up with countless versions of The White Snake. It is a quintessential childhood story, and for many, the first glimpse of romance. For Wu Yi, however, illustrated editions carry deeper significance. Illustrations, picture books, and comic strips—among the most accessible and popular forms of art—transmit legend and imagination across time. They also serve as many artists’ first emotional encounters, early inspirations, and even livelihoods.

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Wu Yi’s paintings, inspired by late Qing popular prints, place him among the “painters of painters.” It is hard to say whether it is the story or the imagery that moves him most. He approaches the subject as a “first painter,” layering his childhood reading experiences into a style that is fluent, playful, and rhythmically innocent. His brushwork imbues the narrative with renewed theatricality and imaginative vitality. Through simplified abstraction, the meticulously detailed, ancient figures of the original are distilled into a painterly essence, inviting a rereading of images and a layering of texts.

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Even now, it is difficult to tell whether the love stories we read shape our notions of love, or whether our own stories find resonance within them. Perhaps this is why Wu Yi is drawn to these old texts and images: they fuse “first instinct” with “familiar circumstance,” creating the space where artist and inspiration meet.

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Elsewhere in the gallery, works such as White Moon, Spring Dawn, Celestial Bath, and Nourishing Things present another midsummer vision of the “Celestial Realm.” Drawing from myth as The Legend of the White Snake does, these paintings evoke love and human desire amidst a celestial backdrop. Stars are abstracted into twinkling points across the night sky, the Milky Way stretches like deep blue satin, and mortals and the heavens are intertwined within this poetic space.

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III.

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On a summer platform, a double-decker train bound for Berlin from Prague waits quietly. Its red doors glow vividly against a gray-blue backdrop. Our gaze is drawn there, and only then do we notice a girl in a white blouse stepping into the carriage. She glances back—reluctant to leave, or savoring one last glimpse of someone’s silhouette? Off-frame, her lover bids farewell. Yet the artist’s perspective aligns almost exactly with the lover’s vantage point—a narrative device characteristic of Wu Yi, who often tells stories from a “protagonist’s” point of view, revealing what an observer sees.

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The scene is set in Prague, in the summer of 2013. That noon, Wu Yi was watching the Czech film Beauty in Distress. Before the closing credits finished, he called his friend Yi Rui, saying he wanted to go to Prague. The trip soon followed, and over the next few years, Wu Yi created a series of works inspired by the city. Events are often connected in subtle, hidden ways. Several summers later, a memory of Prague’s lazy sunlight and carefree days resurfaced. He opened his old sketches and began anew, giving rise to the “Lovers in Prague” series.

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Compared with the immediacy of his earlier works, this series carries an added layer of memory, hazy and serene, as if tracing the passage of time. The indistinct, uncertain nature of recollection leaves room for imagination. Memory allows events to be reshaped, even idealized. Wu Yi removes the impurities and weight of the scene, letting the story float like a dream. Beneath the arches, shadows soften against the summer glare, suspended in the uncertain, dreamlike stillness of midday. Across the street, under the traffic lights, a woman meets another’s gaze—each carrying her own story, her own private cinema. Lovers appear unbidden in the city’s corners, as if the entire city pulses with romance. Even a solitary subway seems to be waiting for something. Memory can be reworked, events can recur—who says love cannot be found around a city corner? Who says desire cannot awaken behind the blue shutters of a white-walled room? In Wu Yi’s hands, summer longing and Prague lovers merge, forming a poetic chemistry of desire and midsummer.

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Love, wherever and whenever, is a timeless and enduring theme. It is recounted endlessly, yet always fresh in its unfolding. We seek ultimate answers to this desire that both aches and enthralls. Yet in the midsummer craving for peaches, in the ill-fated romance at West Lake from The Legend of the White Snake, and in the ordinary rhythms of couples on Prague streets, fate takes its turn, and love charts its own destiny.

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In The Notebook, the elderly couple in a care home open their diary, striving to hold onto memories of love and desire. Their love once stretched long and vibrant, marked by leaps from a boat into the shimmering lake—yet it was only a summer romance. When the season ends, her heart breaks, and the stories live on only within the pages of the notebook.

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Curator: Cui Cancan

Midsummer Night, 2025

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