Listen to me carefully, you bunch of snobs. I just spent hours contemplating Mao Yan’s portraits, and I must tell you something: we may all be wrong about contemporary Chinese painting. You think you know Chinese art with your clichés about calligraphy and ink? Let me tell you about this artist who transforms oil into mist and gray into philosophy.
In his studio in Nanjing, far from the spotlight of Beijing and the chaos of the art market, Mao Yan creates portraits that are both there and not there, like ghosts caught between two worlds. His canvases remind me of those moments when you wake up from a dream and for a few seconds, you don’t know if you are still asleep or already awake. This is exactly what Mao Yan does – he paints that precise moment where reality and illusion merge.
Let’s take a moment to talk about Marcel Proust and his masterpiece “In Search of Lost Time.” Like Proust who dives into the meanders of memory through seven volumes of hallucinatory density, Mao Yan explores the depths of perception through his spectral portraits. It is no coincidence that the artist cites Proust as a major influence. In his portraits of Thomas, his European model whom he has painted for over a decade, Mao Yan captures what Proust called the “intermittences of the heart” – those moments where the present and the past converge, where identity becomes as fluid as smoke.
The portraits of Thomas are not mere representations of a man. They are explorations of time itself, like Proust’s madeleine that triggers a torrent of memories. Each meticulously applied layer of gray paint by Mao Yan is like a stratum of memory, creating a depth that goes far beyond the surface of the canvas. This process can take years, just as it took Proust years to build his monumental work.
The connection to Proust goes even further. Both artists share an obsession with how our perception of the world is constantly in flux. When Proust writes about how Albertine’s face changes depending on the angle and light, he does exactly what Mao Yan does with his portraits where the features seem to dissolve and reform depending on our viewpoint. It is an exploration of the very nature of perception and memory.
But that’s not all. Let’s talk now about Werner Heisenberg and his uncertainty principle. You know, this fundamental principle of quantum mechanics that tells us we can never simultaneously know the position and speed of a particle with absolute precision. The more we try to define one, the blurrier the other becomes. Mao Yan’s portraits function exactly the same way.
The more you try to fix your gaze on the facial features in his portraits, the more they seem to elude you. It’s as if Mao Yan translated Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle into pictorial terms. His figures exist in a state of quantum superposition, both present and absent, defined and undefined. This is particularly visible in his “Thomas” series where the subject seems to simultaneously materialize and dissolve into a fog of gray.
This uncertainty is not a flaw or limitation – it is precisely the subject. Just as Heisenberg showed us that uncertainty is a fundamental property of the universe, Mao Yan shows us that it is also a fundamental property of human identity. His portraits are not blurry out of a lack of technique – they are blurry because it is the only honest way to represent the reality of human existence.
Look at how he uses light in his works. Faces emerge from the darkness like quantum particles appearing spontaneously from the void. The outlines are deliberately undefined, as if the very act of observation disturbs their state. This is precisely what Heisenberg discovered: the observer inevitably affects what they observe. In the case of Mao Yan, every gaze we cast upon his portraits subtly changes them.
And then there is this question of time. In quantum mechanics, time is not the linear arrow we imagine in our daily experience. Likewise, in Mao Yan’s portraits, time seems to bend and twist. A single portrait can contain years of work, layers upon layers of paint applied patiently, creating a sort of temporal visual testimony that defies our linear understanding of time.
What particularly interests me is how Mao Yan uses gray. It is not just a color for him – it is a whole spectrum of possibilities, like the different quantum states of a particle. His grays contain multitudes: sometimes warm and almost breathing, sometimes cold and distant like interstellar space. It’s as if every shade of gray is a possible parallel universe, another version of reality that could exist.
The artist himself speaks of wanting “each corner of the painting to be filled with expression.” This is exactly what the quantum field does – it fills every point in space with potential. In Mao Yan’s portraits, every square inch of the canvas vibrates with possibilities, even the seemingly empty areas. This is what Heisenberg would call the fluctuations of the vacuum – the idea that even the vacuum is never truly empty but always filled with potential energy.
And let’s talk about his technique. The way Mao Yan builds his portraits, layer after layer, recalls how physicists build their quantum models. Each layer of paint is like a wave function, contributing to the final probability of where and how the subject will appear. The end result is not a fixed image, but a constellation of possibilities.
His recent exploration of abstraction is not a break from his previous work – it is a natural extension of this quantum approach. In his abstract works, he pushes even further the idea of uncertainty and potential. Geometric shapes float like particles in the void, their positions and relationships constantly in flux.
But don’t be fooled – this is not cold and calculating conceptual art. There is profound humanity in Mao Yan’s work, just as there is profound beauty in the equations of quantum mechanics. These portraits are meditations on the fundamental nature of human existence, on how we simultaneously exist in multiple states, on how our identity is always in flux.
That’s why Mao Yan’s work is so important now. In an age where we are obsessed with certainties, where we want to define and categorize everything, he reminds us that uncertainty is not just inevitable – it is essential. Just as Heisenberg showed for the physical world, Mao Yan shows for the human world that indeterminacy is a fundamental property of reality.
His portraits are windows into a deeper truth: that we are all, in some way, quantum beings, existing in multiple states simultaneously, our identities as elusive as subatomic particles. And it is precisely this elusiveness that makes us human.
Mao Yan’s genius is to show us this truth not through mathematical formulas or abstract theories, but through the sensual materiality of painting. His portraits are visible thought experiments, meditations on uncertainty made tangible. They invite us to embrace the fundamental ambiguity of existence, not as a limitation, but as a source of beauty and mystery.
So the next time you look at a portrait by Mao Yan, don’t try to “understand” it or “define” it. Instead, allow yourself to be carried away by its quantum uncertainty. Let your perception fluctuate between different possible states, like a particle dancing among probabilities. For that is where the true magic of his art lies – not in what he defines, but in what he leaves undefined.
In a world obsessed with precision and certainty, Mao Yan offers us something more precious: a window into the indeterminate, a celebration of the uncertain. His portraits are not just works of art – they are lessons in quantum physics for the soul.
And if you think I’m pushing the comparison between art and quantum physics too far, take another look at these portraits. Notice how they seem to change according to your viewpoint, how they refuse to be fixed in a single interpretation, how they exist in a state of perpetual possibilities. Isn’t that exactly what Heisenberg taught us about the fundamental nature of reality?
Mao Yan is not just a painter – he is a physicist of the visible, an explorer of the blurred boundaries between being and non-being. And his portraits are not just images – they are visual thought experiments that invite us to challenge everything we think we know about reality, identity, and perception.
In an increasingly polarized world, where everything must be black or white, Mao Yan reminds us of the beauty and truth of gray – not as a compromise or indecision, but as a state of infinite possibilities. And isn’t that, after all, what art should be about?
