Considering the ‘digital-native’ background of young Chinese artists, if only viewing digital photos of Zhao Dongfang’s paintings through an electronic screen, it’s easy to mistake them for oil reproductions of nostalgic images widely circulated on the internet. Only when standing in the exhibition space, face to face with the works, can one immediately sense their distinct intent through the tangible, even slightly obstinate materiality and layered reality.

At first glance, the photos depict empty rooms: glossy tiles, elegant modern tables and chairs, vintage fans and chandeliers, curtains and blinds, fresh flowers and food, water droplets still clinging on faucets and cutlery. Strangely, electronic screens and communication devices are rarely present. These objects—ordinary domestic items from the lives of white middle-class suburban families in the 1950s-70s—are stripped of traces of human use and textual codes. They are bathed in soft light and subdued tones, overlaid with simulated wear or scratches that evoke a nostalgic, melancholic glow of time passed. It feels as though the viewer is being drawn back into the irretrievable “golden age” of an old music video.

Stepping into the physical space, the paintings are presented at nearly life-size proportions. Seeming placed at the wrong height, they hang like stand-ins for furniture, positioned as though in place of their prototypes. The blending of real sunlight and perspective creates the illusion of a theater set in which human roles have exited. Despite the framing angles resembling casual, first-person snapshots, the paintings clearly prioritize the painterly elements of light, brushwork, and texture rather than mimicking the flat, smooth, pixelated digital image effects. From the sides of the frames, the layering of paint conveys a tactile sense of materiality. Zhao’s industrious process, involving silkscreens and stencils, results in surfaces with understated and ambiguous textures that surpass the look of old photographs. He is neither committed to material simulations of aging nor inclined toward the exaggerated rendering and collage typical of digital filters. His works adhere to a form not entirely "pure painting" yet remain steadfastly within its boundaries.

Indeed, this is a house covered in the dust of time's passage—not to summon virtual empathy in the style of a cyber-patina but to create a prism where the outsider’s gaze pries through reality’s dense fog, inviting every visitor to project their memories onto its stage.

Zhao Dongfang is not a “social media painter” that uses traditional manual painting to counter digital media and asserts that “observing screens is the most crucial reality of our time.” Nor does he rely on the internet for reference. The objects and scenes he paints are rooted in personal experiences from his time as a student in the United States—encounters with street scenes, rented homes, or vacation lodgings. These spaces hold the ordinary, nameless lives and memories of others. Yet his process isn’t immediate. Zhao uses photographs and notes to aid memory, gradually crafting his works in the studio, making retrospective, recollective drawings.

The expansive canvases and eye-level compositions construct windows that vividly recall on-site sensations. The interval between initial experience and the painting action allows him to distill and refine the overwhelming immediacy of perception. His standardized process of layering and texturing allows the works' underlying structures to gradually surface. This distance, coupled with the artist’s adherence to routine, lends the paintings a shared tranquility. At first glance, they might resemble the detachment, blurriness, and typification of digital images. On closer inspection, each work reveals its genesis in the light and shadow of a specific fleeting moment—be it the boundary between fog and light at night, the metallic sheen along a chair’s contour, or the repeated rhythms of bottle opener and violin. These details hint at unresolved narrative: a window about to shatter, a door on the verge of closing.

For minds burdened by diminished optimism and overwhelming digital overload, the illusion of a life from a bygone era of prosperity carries a sense of comfort. Especially when such abundant, tangible visual memories are preserved; even the imperfection of old media serve as evidence. With rapidly evolving digital imaging tools and platforms, the affluent, clean, and leisurely middle-class life of the past may now be difficult to attain. Yet a single tap on a smartphone to apply a nostalgic filter is undeniably far more effortless than what the painters of that time could have achieved.

In contrast, Zhao Dongfang’s labor-intensive process merely distills the quiet moments that subtly moved him. He does not pursue precise reproduction, emotional expression, or playful engagement with the effects and dissemination of digital imagery. Moreover, Zhao’s “recollection” of his painted subjects is based purely on imagination. It is as though he treats his subjects as raw materials, uses their seemingly formulaic impressions as deliberate contrasts. In the end, the scattered bubbles and glimmers that emerge on the surface are the truest reflections of his gaze. As a viewer, you, too, are invited to join this retrospective process, becoming aware of your own perspective in the act of observing his work.

Beyond its observational foundation, Zhao’s work is characterized by a defining external layer—an outer shell of oil glaze and textural effects, applied after the painting is complete. This layer functions as a shell, much like the plastic wrap or packing before products are shipped out.

Zhao Dongfang has always been interested in industrializing the painting process. His works are often placed flat before it has completely dried. The final layer of paint is diffused through a silk screen, slowly drying over time. Through this method, the texture of silk and patterns made by stencil are reproduced on the surface of the painting, presenting a texture similar to chemicals eroding the surface of film during development.

There’s an intriguing contradiction in Zhao’s approach: while employing methods akin to industrial printing, he uses traditional oil paint, creating a unified, highly integrated surface instead of disjointed or replicated imagery. Rejecting the efficiency and expressive capabilities of silkscreen printing, Zhao instead uses it as an oversized brush, applying a single, sweeping gesture that encapsulates the entire piece. This intense physical act—a gamble on timing, materials, and texture—is both exhilarating and a crystallization of multiple perspectives and distances.

Zhao embraces the notion of “the death of the author." Painting, after all, lacks the theatricality of other art forms. Instead, he lets the work transcend the artist’s unilateral control, unlocking the potential for an impersonal, dramatic narrative. Viewers are invited to perform their own interpretations on this stage, devoid of actors, bound only by the framed distance that protects their freedom. Just as creases and bubbles in plastic wrap refract countless tiny lights and reflections, the dust-covered house may be an empty shell, yet it is a lens to glimpse oneself.

If the above reasoning holds true, we are inevitably drawn to the fundamental question behind these paintings: How does a Han Chinese male artist, born in 2002 in Beijing and now living in the east coast United States as a student, approach the depiction of such archetypal white, middle-class homes? In this precarious era of populist resurgence and social division, why does he not turn to narratives more directly aligned with his own immediate situation—the more urgent, "unique" narrative of the present reality? Perhaps, as the artist’s name suggests in its cultural resonance: The Red Star Shines light to the east. After all, the east of East Asia leads to America.

Whether in Beijing or the United States, Zhao, like many "ordinary Chinese international students" of his generation, harbors a detached attitude toward the domestic styles and lifestyles of the previous generation of white, middle-class Americans. He neither identifies with, envies, nor disdains them, but he is certainly not unfamiliar with them. Born after the birth of internet, such images had been recycled endlessly—through American films and TV shows, faux "American-style" furniture ads, or generic image templates of uncertain origin—as a "modern family archetype." They became part of a universalized impression that extended beyond the concept of "America." This is the somewhat outdated yet respectable vision of "modern, decent living."

Zhao has previously engaged with his identity as a Chinese immigrant in his work, including sketches and studies of life in Chinese senior homes in immigrant neighborhoods, listening to lives marked by loneliness and alienation despite financial security. Compared to the nuanced struggles of immigrant communities, middle-class luxury apartments represent a familiar yet hollow archetype of the "American happy family"—a template of stability that remains aspirational even as real life in these homes is often messier than advertisements suggest. In times of economic downturn, these spaces become imbued with a melancholic nostalgia for a lost way of life.

Zhao seems to accept his temporary status as a visitor or tourist, facing these archetypes head-on through his research of 3D-scanned spaces on real estate apps and gathering material during home viewings or travels. The non-residential, transient nature of short-term rentals—regularly emptied and cleaned—allows them to remain free of the clutter and grime of daily life, preserving their purity as conceptual spaces. Through his subtle distortions of nostalgic imagery, Zhao critiques the artificiality of such consumption but also respects the genuine sincerity in people’s projections onto these illusions. Time erases all, and Zhao embraces this as a form of authenticity. Rather than simply replicating a correct critique, he chooses to view these spaces with the naive, unencumbered gaze of a passerby, layering fleeting impressions into something vivid and enigmatic. As viewers adopt the wandering eyes of a visitor, they naturally begin to dismantle and reflect on the illusions presented.