Luo Mingjun: Beyond the Visible, Memory

The horizon of painting, for Luo Mingjun, is not defined by what is visible, but by what slowly resurfaces from memory. In Seeing Mountains As Mountains Again, on view at Aye Gallery in Beijing, the artist creates an intimate journey where images, memories, and reality gradually overlap until they become almost indistinguishable. Her works do not depict specific places; instead, they inhabit that uncertain territory where lived experience is transformed into an inner landscape. Moving between cultures, languages, and countries, Luo Mingjun approaches painting as an ongoing search for the self. Each work grows from fragments of everyday life - landscapes, figures, objects, shifting light - filtered through memory until they lose their documentary quality and acquire a more emotional and universal resonance. The canvas becomes a suspended space where time slows down and the boundary between presence and absence begins to dissolve. The exhibition's title echoes a well-known Zen saying: "At first, mountains are mountains; then mountains are no longer mountains; in the end, mountains are mountains again." It reflects on how experience transforms perception before ultimately returning it to a renewed simplicity. Luo Mingjun's paintings unfold through layers, veils, erasures, and returns, inviting viewers to embrace uncertainty rather than seek definitive answers. Rather than representing the world, her works open a threshold toward what has not yet been fully seen.