Light Is the Awakening of the Soul

In Plato's famous "Allegory of the Cave," prisoners mistake the shadows on the wall for reality—until one breaks free from their chains, turns around, and catches sight of the light source that illuminates all things. This ancient metaphor reveals the intrinsic connection between light, truth, and enlightenment in the Western philosophical tradition. Over the course of artist Jiang Pengyi's more than two-decade creative career, "light" has similarly played a dual role: it is both a physical medium of manifestation and a spiritual path to revelation. From the faint glimmers that seem fished from the depths of memory in his early Dark Addiction series, to the blinding cosmic radiance that nearly sears the retina in Sun!Sun!, Jiang Pengyi has accomplished an "alchemy of light," fusing ancient Greek philosophy with contemporary Chinese visual experience into a single body of work.

 

This unique sensitivity to light may trace back to the artist's childhood. In his autobiographical essay Cao Wei, Jiang describes fireflies on summer nights in the courtyard of his Hunan home: "Those flickering points of light were like the breath of the night. I always tried to cup them in my hands, but they would always slip through my fingers." This childhood obsession with faint, transient light already foreshadowed the aesthetic orientation of his later creation. The light of fireflies is neither the practical illumination of sunlight nor the overpowering glow of electric lamps; it is a poetic, almost mystical form of communication. Just as Aristotle described light in De Anima as the "actualization of the transparent medium," Jiang Pengyi's early series Dark Addiction is a delicate capture of this "process of actualization." These explorations at the edge of visibility forged a unique "poetics of faint light"—the blurred outlines and soft graininess, much like the elusive fireflies of childhood memory, are not an absence of light, but rather "the abundance of another kind of light" (in the words of Zheng Ziyu).

 

From the Neoplatonist Plotinus's "theory of emanation," light is the first entity that flows forth from the "One," illuminating the world from its strongest to weakest form. Jiang Pengyi's creative trajectory, however, presents a reverse exploration: from the faint glow of fireflies in Dark Addiction to the intense overexposure in Sun!Sun!, he has completed a visual pilgrimage from intimate memory to the cosmic origin. When he points his lens directly at the sun, it is as if he is echoing Heraclitus' philosophical thought that "the sun is new every day"—yet at the same time, he subverts the technical worship of "proper exposure" in traditional photography. In the view of Professor Gu Zheng, these overexposed, glare-filled images carry connotations of "suffering and sacrifice"; they are not merely optical phenomena, but inquiries into the realm of the invisible.

 

Jiang Pengyi's understanding of light transcends the binary opposition inherent in the Western metaphysical tradition. In his visual universe, darkness is not the opposite of light, but another state of light's existence. This idea subtly aligns with the wisdom of "interdependence of light and darkness" in traditional Chinese philosophy—a concept also embodied in the boy in Cao Wei, who chases fireflies with a glass jar. The child never truly captures those points of light, yet in this process, he grasps the dialectic between light and darkness, presence and absence.

 

This exhibition is like a philosophical journey through the genealogy of light. From Plato's cave to the summer nights of the Hunan courtyard, from the silver halide reactions in the darkroom to the visual adventure of facing the sun directly, Jiang Pengyi has built a unique visual poetics through more than two decades of creative practice. He shows us that in an era flooded with images, true visual enlightenment may not lie in capturing more light, but in learning to coexist with light—much like the childhood pursuit of fireflies, maintaining a poetic distance and reverence. Along this path of light, we will eventually understand: the most profound revelations often come from those seemingly faint glimmers of "Dark Addiction" that reach straight to the soul.

Born in 1977 in Yuanjiang, Hunan Province, Jiang Pengyi graduated from the China Academy of Art and currently lives and works in Beijing. His work primarily utilizes photography and video as mediums, presenting the internal and external obstacles and uncertainties of individual life through the creation of surreal landscapes and subtle narratives of scenes.

 

His solo exhibitions include: "Jiang Pengyi" (ShanghART H-Space, Shanghai, 2014); "Jiang Pengyi: Glimpses" (Eli Klein Gallery, New York, USA, 2014); "Jiang Pengyi: Intimacy" (ShanghART Gallery, Singapore, 2015); "Jiang Pengyi: Grace" (ShanghART Gallery, Shanghai, 2016); "Jiang Pengyi: Away From Disgrace" (Blindspot Gallery, Hong Kong, 2017); "Jiang Pengyi: Foresight" (ShanghART Gallery, Beijing, 2019); "Jiang Pengyi: Birds Bring Forth the Sun" (ShanghART Gallery, Shanghai, 2021); "Jiang Pengyi: Firescribbling" (X Contemporary Art, Changsha, 2022); "Jiang Pengyi: Streams over the Serried Stones" (Honin Art Center, Chengdu, 2022); "Jiang Pengyi: The Monument Bestowed by Desolation to Solitude Client" (ShanghART Gallery, Beijing, 2024).

 

His group exhibitions include: "Jiang Pengyi & Cheng Ran: Immersion and Distance" (UCCA, Beijing, 2009); "The Tender Truth: Jiang Pengyi & Maleonn" (Blindspot Gallery, Hong Kong, 2010); "Be Natural Be Yourself" (Frac des Pays la Loire Fonds Regional d'Art Contemporain, France, 2011); "No Exit—Urban Space, Helsinki Photography Biennial" (Finland, 2012); "ON | OFF" (UCCA, Beijing, 2013); "West Bund 2013: A Biennial of Architecture and Contemporary Art" (Shanghai, 2013); "Three Shadows First Experimental Image Open Exhibition" (Three Shadows Photography Art Centre, Beijing, 2014); "40 Years of Chinese Contemporary Photography (1976-2018)" (OCAT, Shenzhen, 2018); "Glitch" (Pinakothek of the Modern, Munich, Germany, 2023); "An Atlas of the Difficult World" (MACA Art Center, Beijing, 2024); "Laozi’s Furnace" (White Rabbit Gallery, Sydney, Australia, 2024).

 

His awards include: the Tierney Fellowship Award from the First Annual Three Shadows Photography Award (2009), the Jury Grand Prize from the Société Générale Chinese Art Awards (2010), the Aletti ArtVerona Prize for Photography (2011). In 2012, he was invited to participate in the Helsinki Photography Biennial and was nominated for the Prix Pictet 2012, as well as the BarTur Photography Award, London (2020).