Mocube is currently presenting Lingering Clouds, a solo exhibition by artist Guo Haiqiang. The exhibition marks a significant milestone in the artist’s long-term engagement with the Qinling Mountains, and reflects a deeper contemplation of time, nature, and lived experience through his sustained landscape practice. This conversation revolves around the origins of Lingering Clouds, the significance of the Qinling Mountains as a site of artistic production, and the ways in which painting emerges through acts of observation, walking, and dwelling. Throughout the interview, we explore how the artist transforms his enduring encounters with landscape into a visual language shaped by time, perception, and presence. In the interview below, Mocube is abbreviated as M, and Guo Haiqiang as G.

M: "Lingering Clouds" is borrowed from a poem by Tao Yuanming. The phrase later became the title of this exhibition. How do you understand the meanings of "lingering" and "clouds" in this context? How do they relate to your artistic practice in recent years?

G: The exhibition borrowed the title Lingering Clouds from Tao Yuanming's poem Lingering Clouds (Ting-yun). This is not simply an attempt to emulate the ancients in pursuit of transcendence or detachment from the mundane. Rather, it is the phrase "lingering clouds" itself that succinctly and profoundly points to the exhibition's theme. These two characters possess a remarkable vitality: the movement of clouds responds to the stillness of mountains; clouds are what bring mountains to life. For many years, mountains have been the focus of my work. I enjoy condensing the forms of mountains and the vitality of clouds into a unified, primordial, and complete whole—a state of quiet contemplation. I seek to suspend time itself, allowing the clouds to come to rest. Perhaps, when the clouds stop moving, they become eternal. As Li Bai wrote, "Mountains rise before one's face; clouds emerge beside the horse's head." This is the relationship between clouds and mountains. I have no interest in simply imitating how the ancients depicted them. Instead, I prefer to enter the mountains themselves and paint my own genuine experience. To borrow Shitao's words: "I am myself because there is a self within me; the eyebrows and beard of the ancients cannot grow upon my face, nor can their innermost organs be placed within my body." I am creating my own clouds and mountains. Su Shi once remarked: "The great painters of antiquity were never ordinary people; their wondrous imagination sprang from the same source as poetry." Faced with the poetry and paintings of the ancients, I ask myself: what have I been doing all these years?

M: In the exhibition tour video, you mentioned that the phrase "clouds stretching across the Qinling Mountains" resembles the single horizontal stroke (yi heng) in Chinese calligraphy. How has your experience with calligraphy informed the way you conceive and depict clouds in your work?

G: One.

M: You often speak of measuring with the entire body. In relation to this group of works, what specific role does the body play in the process of painting?

G: The moment one enters the mountains, they confront the body directly. Looking at photographs or moving images is an entirely different experience. That is why I speak of measuring with the body. I measure the height and depth of mountains with my legs. I measure the scale of a painting with my entire body. The dimensions of these works correspond precisely to the span of my outstretched arms moving through space. In other words, the scale of the paintings is comparable to the scale of the human body. From a painter's perspective, this is a comfortable size to work with. If one wishes to depict mountains on a monumental scale in order to convey grandeur, one must climb ladders and stand on platforms. But that is not what I am interested in doing at present. Every scale of painting establishes a different relationship with the body. Should one prioritize the tangible object (wu) or the underlying principle (li)? These paintings seek a balance between the two.

M: In your earlier works, you often broke beyond the boundaries of the frame and even incorporated actual materials from the mountains and forests. In this new body of work, however, most pieces are completed within the frame. How do you understand this “reduction” or “subtraction” of materials?

G: Inside the frame and outside the frame. What can be contained within the frame, and what exceeds it—I regard this as a philosophical proposition. I spent several years working outside the frame, and then several more years working within it. This is one of the fascinating aspects of making art. As an ancient text states: "Heaven and Earth are the parents of all things. When gathered together they form a body; when dispersed they become beginnings. So long as form and essence remain intact, transformation remains possible."

M: As an artist trained in sculpture, how do you understand the sense of “sculpturality” in this body of work? How does it differ from your earlier approach, which emphasized material accumulation and relief-like surfaces?

G: Whatever one's training, one inevitably carries certain habits. I call these habitual tendencies. Throughout my work in recent years, I have followed these habits while constantly correcting them. When material accumulates on the picture surface, it begins to resemble sculpture or relief. Yet painting has its own language, distinct from sculpture. Just as sculpture and a sculptural quality are two different concepts, painting must remain true to its own means. In this exhibition, the works within the frame are executed through purely painterly methods on canvas. They represent my current reflections and experiments concerning the language of painting itself.

M: Over the years, your way of working has changed significantly: cycling into the mountains, sketching on site, then returning to the studio to rework the images; moving from oil pastels and small-scale works to oil painting and larger formats, with both materials and scale constantly shifting. Yet the Qinling Mountains have remained unchanged throughout. Why is it ultimately the mountains and clouds that persist?

G: In 2013, I first rode a bicycle into the mountains to paint from life. For ease of transport, I worked on a small scale, using oil pastel on paper. Many of those early works could be completed on site. After several years, however, I realized that painting from life alone was far from sufficient. I began bringing the works back to the studio, returning to them repeatedly and contemplating them over time. As time accumulates, so too does thought. Now, thirteen years have passed. Time flies, the seasons continue their endless cycle, yet the mountain remains unchanged. As the poem says: "The mountain flowers fall away, yet the mountain endures; waters flow on in emptiness, while the mountain remains at ease."

M: Your paintings often carry a sense of heaviness and slowness. What is the relationship between this rhythm and your way of living?

G: The kind of painting I practice is traditional, even old-fashioned. It requires time. The act of painting itself is imbued with a sense of duration. I use time to paint time. What matters is the time I devote to painting. What matters is time itself.

M: You once said, “The mountain is my studio.” After more than a decade of continuously engaging with the same landscape of clouds and mountains, what do you feel you are truly trying to paint—is it the mountain, time itself, or something else?

G: My paintings arise from direct encounters with nature and from lived experience, yet I do not seek to depict natural scenery. For this exhibition, I approached pictorial composition through the structural principles of Chinese calligraphy. A single square Chinese character contains an entire conception of the universe and of space. Each character is a world unto itself. Even the character yi(一, one) constitutes a complete world. When this understanding enters painting, its meaning changes. It is no longer merely a segment of cloud, but the totality of cloud itself. In the mountains, I enjoy quietly observing the mountains and the clouds. In the studio, I enjoy slowly contemplating my paintings. In this way, the heart finds a place to rest. Painting is my way of life. It is a way of being in the world. I think through painting, and I live through painting.