VIRTUAL GALLERY FOR NIGHT REVELS OF HANXIZAI

This is an virtual space project did for an NFT company called Artverse. The firm was just about to launch a series of NFT associted with the famous handscroll “The Night Revels of Han Xizai. They wanted to have create a virtual gallery, so the buyers can observe those NFT within it.

The Night Revels of Han Xizai or The Night Entertainments of Han Xizai is a painted handscroll attributed to Chinese 10th-century artist Gu Hongzhong. The painting depicts Han Xizai, a minister from Southern Tang under the imperial government of emperor Li Yu, accompanied with realistic portrayals of more than forty people.

Gu Hongzhong was reportedly sent to spy on Han Xizai. In one version of the story, Han Xizai repeatedly missed morning audiences with Li Yu because of his revelry and needed to be shamed into dignified behavior. In another version, Han Xizai refused Li Yu’s offer to become prime minister. To check Han’s suitability and find out what he was doing at home, Li Yu sent Gu Hongzhong alongside another court painter, Zhou Wenju, to one of Han’s night parties and depict what they saw. Each of two painters created a painting based on their observation after a night of partying. Unlike Gu’s painting, the one made by Zhou was subsequently lost.

This dialogue is full of metaphors, and performances. They left “Night Revels of Han Xizai” as evidence of a misplaced dialogue.

The reason why Li Yu sent Gu Hongzhong to paint the picture scroll is to use the predictable painting as a metaphor to reflect Han Xizai’s disadvantages in assistants. However, Gu Hongzhong had already detected Li Yu’s motives before the metaphor occurred; he then constructed this magnificent performance, which also concealed the irony of the impending decline of the Southern Tang Dynasty.

So what happened in the Night Revels of Han Xizai exists as a double medium in the dialogue between Li Yu and Han Xizai. One is as a communication medium, it becomes a carrier for Li Yu and Han Xizai to judge each other’s current situation The second is as a medium for Li Yu to change Han Xizai’s identity. Doing or not doing this defines Han Xizai’s life status and official position.

Elements: folding screens, LED screens, water ripple textured tiles, light oriented flow

This exhibition hall is mainly made up by folding screens. From the perspective of Gu Hongzhong, passing through different section of the hallway, sometimes a wall, sometimes a screen; and then putting those fragments together into a night banquet in his memory picture. The atmosphere of the whole space emphasises on blurred out bondaries thus memory is depicted into a complete picture scroll.

Elements: Stage, Chinese style fence, ancient Chinese sandalwood furniture, ribbon, high wall.

When walking through this scne, a feeling of crumbling and superficial flashiness appears. The ribon guides the audience (Li Yu) to a visual center where all dances, landscapes and interactions happens. But the space is a weightlessness aggregate: it is an unstable space cobbled together by off-the-shelf elements and furnitures.

Elements: bedroom elements, stairs, privacies, drapes

Han Xizai has a dual personality of knowledgeable and dissolute. This section of the gallery is designed to look like a bedroom, covered with saturated red drapes and floating instructments to form a lustic immpression. However combined with the stage looking foreground and the long stairs audience have to clim before entering this section, a performative character is added to the space. Perhaps all the lustic and debauchery impressions were pretentious and framed?

Elements: modern interior structure, water, hollow space, patterns

The space symbolises Han Xizai taking a break from the bustling activities, allowing Gu Hongzhong to record such scene onto the picture scroll. This space also gave the audience a momentary rest. The shapes and forms were gained from ancient buildings, but the space is presented in a white mold and minimalist way. The furniture that appeared in Han Xizai’s night banquet appears under water, illustrates the sinking of time.

Elements: deconstructed Chinese characters, water ripples, veil, natural lights, elements from Chinese garden.

During this section of the scroll, the maids perform with ancient musical instruments. the rhythm of the phrase and the performance can be abstracted into deconstructed Chinese characters to reflects on regular forms are blown away. The natural lightings penatrating through the skylight and then through the veil creates a sense of puzzling and mysteries atmosphere to the interior, and also forces the audience to focus upon the Chinese character sculptures in the water and hanging above despiting wherever they are within this scene.

Elements: luminous deconstructed Chinese characters, upside down ancient pavillion

The whole banquet was immersed in a debauchery atmosphere, implyes Han Xizai’s disappointment and lonliness. The upside down pavillion corresponds to the inevitable sinking political situation of the Southern Tang Dynasty: still seems resplendent, however doomed to fall and difficult to reverse.