Painting is a way to open—
a way to open up time.

It creates a period of time and creates an illusion.

I think, in a sense, painting is underestimated in this era.
Painting is still an important medium to understand time.

Through its complexity, its metaphorical nature, and the body’s involvement in its techniques, painting in many cases depends on chance.

Many images come from very accidental opportunities.
It is a bit like something emerging from the subconscious, like the history and politics behind a coin, along with collective and individual memories.

In recent years, I feel that the world is expanding in an unimaginable, almost crazy way.
I’ve been wondering how people can find their own time within it.

In the process of drawing the coin, I often think of Velázquez’s The Spinners.
He only used a few very relaxed strokes to depict a high-speed spinning machine.

What shocked me was that he seems to have established a time outside the clock—
a time and space unique to painting.

My recent creations seem to be related to time.
I try to understand the present through them: to understand what is happening now and what the present means.

In history, there has never been an art market as prosperous as today, with so many artworks.

I want to know, after time passes, what will ultimately be left behind.
What are the criteria by which time selects?

How can we, within a larger span of time, create time that belongs to us.

by Li Tangting