The Key to the Pastoral Light

The Key to the Pastoral Light

Dates: 2025.10.30 -11.24

Xue Yang’s recent practice weaves a Kafkaesque layering into her poetic imagery, linguistic forms, and working methods—from figures in rain hats and scarves, to the boundless dreamscapes of the spirit, to living forms as wondrous as nature itself. Much like the relationship between the artist and her practice, the subject and “nature” mutually uphold and promise each other’s fulfilment.

The exhibition title “The Key of Pastoral Light” stems from this recognition of mutual embeddedness. The Chinese characters “牧光” (pastoral light) are a homophone for “目光” (gaze), while also evoking the pastoral sensibility of a herdsman, extended further into a sense of “temporal-spatial mastery” — as if commanding a landscape at rest. The character “钥” (key) opens up a vista, a space, or could also be understood as the “key” that establishes connections between subjects. The title draws closer to the visual perspective of the works in this exhibition. On one hand, it evokes the secretive, discerning gaze of Degas’s “keyhole” — a moment in which the observer and the observed remain hidden from each other’s bodies, yet their lines of sight intersect. On the other hand, it suggests an inadvertent discovery — a key that opens the doors of time and space to possibilities and tendencies at any moment.