... Marco Polo (1254-1324) had just arrived and did not yet understand the languages of the eastern Mediterranean. He could only express himself by pulling objects from his luggage—drums, salted fish, warthog teeth— ─Then point to the object, with gestures, jumps, shouts of surprise or fear, imitating the low barking of a jackal, and the hooting of an owl. The connections between the different elements of the story were not always clear to the emperor. Objects can have a variety of meanings: a quiver full of arrows could represent the coming of war, a bountiful hunt, or a weapons store; an hourglass could represent the passing of time, the past, gravel, or the place where the hourglass was made. But what really attracted Kublai Khan (1215-1294) in the events or news reported by this inarticulate messenger was the surrounding space, the blank space that was not filled with words. Marco Polo recounts the virtues of the cities he visited: you can wander in your mind, get lost, stop for the cool air, or leave. -- Calvino, "The Invisible City" The writer Italo Calvino (1923-1985) in the novel "Invisible Cities", based on the historical fact that the Italian Venetian merchant Marco Polo once arrived in China in the 13th century,
fictionalized a traveler. version of The Thousand and One Nights. In the story, Marco Polo describes to the Yuan emperor Kublai Khan one city after another that may exist or may be imagined, providing kings who have not set foot on every inch of the empire, outlining the outline of their empire. Just like Marco Polo in the novel, Han Xiangning uses canvas and paper to tell the story scene by scene in the way of encountering Wedding Photo Editing reality and fiction to the viewer, and in it, he forms his art world. Han Xiangning, who was born in 1939, is 80 years old this year. From a general earthly perspective, this is undoubtedly an elder. However, his life and life form is always young. He shuttles between the Three Gorges in Taipei, Taiwan, Dali in Yunnan, China, and New York in the United States all year round. The geographical distance has never restricted his physical movement. The change of geographical area brings him the nutrients of creative themes. In the long creative process,
Han Xiangning has never been afraid to try different creative styles and media. Starting from non-figurative painting in the 1960s; developing famous photorealistic urban landscapes in the 1970s; paying more attention to the subject matter of figures from the late 1970s to the 1980s, shifting from realism to abstraction of lines. After the 1990s, he began to create a series of landscape works, and in recent years, he tried to retouch the output of the captured images with pictures. From oil paints, acrylic paints, drawing inks, airbrushes, rollers, brushes, and cameras, he shuttles between different media and tools, expressing what he wants with various visual vocabulary. Among them, Han Xiangning's philosophy in urban and landscape works is particularly intriguing. 1. This city, so close and so far