In April this year, CLC Gallery underwent a renovation. The front hall was transformed into a public space tiled entirely in white ceramic, where visitors can take a break, read a book, or type on their laptops. Turning a corner and passing through a hallway that feels as if it's still "loading"—with exposed bricks and studs making up the walls—one arrives at a bright and open exhibition space. This is where artist Yu Guo’s latest solo exhibition, Between Mountains, is being held. The show recently won the Best Exhibition Award at the 7th Gallery Weekend Beijing. Within the space, canvas paintings and moving images engage in a quiet dialogue, narrating the personal journeys of different individuals across different times and places.

Installation View, Yu Guo Solo Exhibition: Between Mountains, Courtesy of CLC Gallery Venture

Yu Guo, a graduate of the Oil Painting Department at Sichuan Fine Arts Institute, now primarily focuses on video art. However, in this exhibition, painting and video are juxtaposed and even interwoven—something that, in his view, doesn’t imply that one medium is subordinate to the other. “Painting is not some derivative of video, nor is video a way for me to re-create a painting,” he explains. Instead, both serve a shared thematic concern: geography—a subject that Yu has been deeply contemplating in recent works. For him, painting is a more subjective form of expression, allowing him to freely compress and reconfigure spatial elements within the composition, and to seamlessly infuse atmosphere through color. Video, on the other hand, is “a medium that is highly tolerant and lacks a fixed ontology,” as Yu puts it. In his video practice, he continuously “packages” various types of content together to explore a wide range of creative possibilities.

Installation View, Yu Guo Solo Exhibition: Between Mountains, Courtesy of CLC Gallery Venture

The body is the last piece of private property a person truly owns, and a defining marker of the self.[1] In Yu Guo’s work, the “body” is both the source of impulse and its executor. “If I find myself confused by my surroundings, my instinct is to go out for a walk,” Yu admits. For him, bodily impulse comes first—artistic methods only emerge later, growing out of that physical urge in more refined and mature forms. But while walking through nature, Yu doesn’t experience a thrill of conquest; instead, he becomes acutely aware of the body's limitations. “Why can humans only perceive reality within certain scales? What is the relationship between perception and space?” This sense of limitation is embedded in both the content and form of Yu’s work. In South Park, for instance, the DV camera used could only project footage it had captured itself, and not every corner of the park could be illuminated by the human gaze. Although the original videos are shot in crisp 4K, Yu deliberately uses low-resolution monitors to create a particular texture.

Yu Guo, South Park, 2015, single-channel 4K digital video, color, sound, 00:04:51 (Video still). Image courtesy of the artist and CLC Gallery Venture.

When the medium becomes an extension of the body, the artist’s pursuit of perceptual scale naturally extends to the interaction between body and medium within space. “This space gradually expands, forming what I now call ‘geography’ — a broader spatial concept in my current work,” Yu Guo explains. He aims to directly present the relationship between body and medium in his works, rather than exposing our current reality of being enveloped by media through theoretical expression. In his latest exhibited work, Mountains, Yu Guo encounters a group of children in Xinjiang who treat a viral “magic song” created by people in Yunnan on Douyin (TikTok) as a children’s tune, blending the magical with the real. Throughout his field research traversing mountains and fields, the artist’s body becomes a medium connecting thought and reality. Far from the fragmented and homogenized urban spaces, through Yu Guo’s imagery, we reestablish a renewed experiential relationship with diverse spaces.

Installation View, Yu Guo Solo Exhibition: Between Mountains, Courtesy of CLC Gallery Venture

"Geography is vast and complex in meaning, yet it is also very concrete." Yu Guo recalls his childhood experience of traveling far from home for the first time—possibly his first "walk" in his creative journey—through hand-drawn animation. From Mountains to the Coast embodies both a personal, specific experience and reflects the broader reality of population movement within the context of the times. Yu Guo chose "geography" as a creative entry point precisely because of its ability to mediate between the individual and the collective. Although we often use geography as a label for a certain group or as a classificatory basis for population and cultural traits, each person lives concretely within a geographical space and from their personal experiences, a variety of nostalgia is born.

Yu Guo, Mountains, 2023, single audio 4K digital video, color, 00:55:04 (video screenshot). Image courtesy of the artist and CLC Gallery Venture.

During the act of walking, space moves along with the body; static images are infused with time, weaving a narrative structure. Perhaps it is this persistent impulse to walk that drives Yu Guo’s engagement with video, or maybe it is the captivating nature of moving images that keeps the artist in motion. His “essay film” Mountains serves as a significant milestone in his creative journey. Centered on the theme of “geography,” Yu Guo conducts a series of observations about the lives and cultures of local people in Xinjiang, where he has stayed. The transitions between different shots blend objective real scenes with subjective paintings, and daytime landscapes are interspersed with nighttime views. The entire exhibition feels like a mini-retrospective in terms of the selection of works, showcasing how the artist’s previously experimental cinematic language and techniques have matured into a more refined phase.

Interview

798arts: What kind of ideas guided the selection of works for this exhibition? Why did you choose this particular way of displaying them?

Yu Guo: Actually, the presentation of this work mainly follows the logic of my working method, and the display is very simple. It does not use the on-site effect as the primary reference standard. For example, these monitor-based works are some of my earlier video pieces. I feel that screening these DV-quality works on monitors is a display method that best suits their aesthetic.

798arts: What is the relationship between painting and video in your creative process?

Yu Guo: Painting and video are two fundamentally different media. I originally studied oil painting, so painting was my earliest form of expression. It’s not that painting is a derivative of video, nor do I approach video as a way to recreate a painting. However, they often share the same theme, such as “geography.” Painting has its own inherent language — for example, the way it compresses spatial elements like mountains. Painting can be a very subjective form of expression.

Video, on the other hand, is quite different in form from painting. Some of my earliest works explored the relationship between body and space through walking, but video can also incorporate painting. I see video today as a very inclusive medium without a strict ontology. It’s a kind of packaging that can contain painting, writing, even cinema and theater all together. But painting has a lineage spanning thousands of years and maintains an essential, ontological nature.

Installation View, Yu Guo Solo Exhibition: Between Mountains, Courtesy of CLC Gallery Venture

798arts: Many works in this exhibition are related to "walking." Why did you choose this activity as the source of embodied experience?

Yu Guo: I feel that walking in a geographical environment is one of the most basic, instinctive, and also most subjective behaviors. It's very simple and doesn’t need much explanation. If we are interested in reality—like myself, or if I feel confused in my living environment—people naturally want to go out for a walk. It’s a very fundamental bodily impulse. Through this action, a whole series of more complete or mature art-related methods can develop.

798arts: Nowadays, short videos and live streaming are extremely popular, allowing many people to "reach" different parts of the world without leaving their homes. What do you think are the differences between visual “visits” on a screen and experiencing places in person?

Yu Guo: The difference is definitely big, but I don’t think there’s a good or bad difference. I also enjoy watching all kinds of short videos on Douyin or Kuaishou, but what I care about more is the logic behind their production because I pay close attention to how media itself is developing today. I work in video art, and different media platforms each have their own characteristics now. But this doesn’t conflict with real walking. It’s like watching a movie on your phone versus watching it in a cinema—the way content is expressed is different, but there’s no conflict between the two. Today, our reality is wrapped in media; we get information through various media platforms, and so what we call reality is shaped between the virtual and the media.

Installation View, Yu Guo Solo Exhibition: Between Mountains, Courtesy of CLC Gallery Venture

798arts: When recording and expressing actions through video, how do you enable the audience to have a similar embodied experience?

Yu Guo: From the perspective of the medium, I think it’s more about a combined approach, rather than just outputting a viewpoint. Many of my earlier works relate to the medium itself—they are actually interactions between the body and the medium. For example, I often used a consumer DV camera for filming. That kind of DV had its own characteristics—it had a projection function but couldn’t play other videos, only the footage it recorded itself. So I felt it was like a human body, having a certain scale.

Take my work Southern Park as an example: I shot footage during the day with the DV, then projected it at night, and recorded that projection with another camera, overlapping day and night. My earliest video works involving the medium were about the interaction between body and medium within a space. Over time, this space expanded and formed what I now call “geography” — a much broader space. So my idea and method are to present the mutual relationship between body and medium, rather than to express a specific theory.

Yu Guo, From Mountains to Coast, 2022, single audio 4K digital video, color, 00:55:04 (video still). Image courtesy of the artist and CLC Gallery Venture.

798arts: Do you think your understanding of "geography" leans more toward a personalized narrative, or do you hope to find a collective resonance through it?

Yu Guo: The reason I use "geography" as a perspective, or treat "geography" as a medium for art, is actually to embrace both. Previously, my artistic approach separated these aspects — either focusing on works about population movement, or shaping very specific individual characters, or something more macro. Why geography? Because geography is vast, complex in meaning, yet very concrete. It is not abstract. That’s why in Chinese, we have the phrase “luò dì” (落地), meaning “grounded” or “taking root.” All complex, entangled, and hard-to-express issues exist in a specific place. So through the concept of geography, I actually want to address the question you just asked — I want both. There are concrete experiences, but from these experiences, the understanding of the relationship between people and space gradually becomes clearer. It is a vast, grand perspective. From the angle of “geography,” the two are not in conflict.

Annotation:
[1] Wang Min’an, The Technology of the Body: Politics, Sexuality, and the Destruction of the Self, in Body, Space and Postmodernity, Jiangsu People’s Publishing House, 2015 edition.

Text and Interview | Larry Z
Editing | TaeTae