Vessels of hill
Silence, A Leap Like a Hill
Pangu separated heaven and earth: the clear and light rose to form the heavens, while the turbid and heavy sank to become the earth. The inception of the world was a primal differentiation—light and dark, negative and positive, the manifested and the concealed, each claiming its domain within chaos. This shares a striking affinity with the darkroom: negative and positive images transfigure into one another, mirroring the rhythmic wax and wane of Yin and Yang. Yan's practice departs precisely from this foundational differentiation.
Born in Changsha in 2000, Yan later went to South Korea to pursue photography. This intra-East Asian migration allowed the dedication to materiality and darkroom craftsmanship in Korean contemporary photography to quietly converge with the traditional Chinese literati pursuit of medium resonance within his work.
Søren Kierkegaard noted that anxiety is the dizziness of freedom. Standing at the edge of an abyss, dizziness stems not from fear, but from the summons of freedom itself—telling you that you can jump. Yan's photography is the very leap executed within this dizziness: hand-brushing photosensitive emulsion onto glass, where streaks and bubbles defy predetermination, leaving no prior certainty of a work's realization. In "Vessel of hill", mountains are cut, worn away, spliced, and recombined, receding into outlines, grains, double images, and voids. This is not a representation of the mountain, but a sacrifice offered to it. Kierkegaard's "leap of faith" occurs where reason reaches its outer limit, and the individual casts their entire existence into an unprovable paradox.
In the fragments of "Untitled", Yan juxtaposes photographic images with raw lacquer and silver leaf. Raw lacquer, through repeated coating and layered curing, embodies a temporal philosophy opposed to speed; silver leaf oxidizes, and images fade—three media aging at their own distinct paces, where the time of material existence itself constitutes history. Every moment leaves an irrevocable mark upon matter: the present becomes eternity, and the fragment encompasses the whole.
Yan's practice navigates continuously between tradition and innovation. Darkroom manipulation marks a return to the essence of photography, the use of lacquer activates Chinese material culture, and the mutual transformation of positive and negative images echoes the ancient wisdom of Yin and Yang generating one another. Rather than attempting to restore a complete traditional order, he seeks within the fractures of tradition that singular point where growth remains possible.
In the "Book of Revelation", when the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. This was the stillness before the trumpet of judgment sounded, recalling the chaos before Pangu opened the heavens—when nothing was yet differentiated and all was possible. During that half-hour, time was suspended, sound was withdrawn, and the universe held its breath. Before an image is revealed, every work by Yan passes through such a stillness.
Standing amidst the mountain forests, Yan executed that leap—not to reach the opposite shore, but because the leap itself is the most devout knocking upon that narrow gate.
