The Time It Takes to See

Latitude Gallery is pleased to present The Time It Takes to See, a two-person show bringing together Ye Cheng and Xinran Guan, two painters whose distinct surfaces translate the perception of processes into matter. Together, the artists' works ask what happens between vision and understanding—between the moment light arrives and the moment it is felt. In this curation, the works are considered as measurements—an instrument that registers the time between appearance and recognition. Each surface functions as an instrument with different units. Brushstroke, drying time, the physical thickness of pigments, density of marks, and more orchestrated a concise recording, acting as units of measurement—marks that store gestures with a timestamp, a delay, a thought, a dream, an alternative, and more. The painting surface, usually read as completion, is instead treated as a cross-section of ongoing processes. In Cheng’s landscapes, translucent synthetic silk allows color to drift through layers like light through air. Scenery becomes a record of movement—boulders, rivers, and clouds rendered as thresholds and pathways. The compositions symbolize experiences of moving through, rather than arrival. As a result, each dimension and site created in the paintings extends visions forward, marking a continuation of her ongoing exploration of travel as perception. From the other side of the lens, through dense color and recurring figures, Guan tells glimpses of stories and observational remarks—moments of still life, night, or human gesture translated into hues. Her process accumulates these fragments until the narrative almost dissolves, leaving traces of time and memory in pigment. Guan’s surfaces retain the warmth of observation, measuring not distance nor duration, but attention and care. The artists’ singular acts of seeing are the inner agitation of the paintings. They do not offer immediate clarity in measurement. Upon pondering, one may fill out a story in the gaps left by Guan’s suggestions, or find a path through Cheng’s maze. As light reflects from the surface and shines into one’s eye, details appear and recede, asking the eye to move differently, begging the encounter to be reciprocal. The paintings observe the viewer back, measuring attention through subtle changes of reflection and density. In this mutual gaze, the act of seeing becomes continuous,— evolved into a shared interval where the work and the viewer complete each other. Ye Cheng (b. 1992) is a Chinese-American artist currently based in New York. She received her MFA in Fine Arts from Parsons School of Design, The New School in 2022, and her BFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 2016. Cheng has exhibited at Latitude Gallery in New York, IRL Gallery, Tree Art Gallery in Beijing, Palazzo Jules Maidoff in Florence, Makeroom LA and TAG Gallery in Los Angeles, as well as RHAA in Chicago. Her work has been featured among notable MFA graduates in Artnet China and e-flux Education. Guan Xihan (b. 1992, Beijing, China) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. She holds an MFA in Painting from the Maryland Institute College of Art, an MS in Operations Research from Columbia University, and a BA in Art from Bard College. Guan has held solo exhibitions at Xin Dong Cheng Space for Contemporary Art (Beijing), Bridge Gallery (Beijing), and Tianjiaotang Gallery (Beijing). Her work has been featured in major group exhibitions at institutions such as the Today Art Museum (Beijing), Tianjin Art Museum, ART021 Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair, Huzhou Museum, TAG Gallery (Los Angeles), and Stride Art Gallery (New York). Her work explores mythic imagination and emotion through abstraction, merging Chinese philosophical thought with painterly materiality. Guan’s paintings are held in the collections of the Tianjin Museum and Capital One Financial Corp.

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