WHON WHON

Huang Qilin, who signs the pictures WHON WHON, works with understated color and trailing strokes that refuse to sit still. The pages are not a louder poster in a loud city. They are an argument for slowing down.

WHON WHON began in oil painting and later moved to acrylics. The work answers a fast modern tempo: a plea for himself and for anyone looking to pause, to sit with a hard day at a slower speed. That wish is why he chose the name.

"Indeed, we are accustomed to moving swiftly, whether in our emotions or our steps," WHON WHON muses. "Yet, slowing down is not a death sentence, but a chance to breathe." His "WHON WHON Universe" is an outer space of low-saturation color, where each person carries a wishing meteor—the soul, its color matching the weather inside. It may be chaotic, it may be low, but it stays true, cartoonish and still real.

These realities, as he describes them, may be rough, anxious, chaotic, but they are a part of us. The world he makes is a space where those feelings can stand without apology. Two animal characters do most of the talking: Dilo the rabbit with bubble-like ears and Mota the three-eyed bear. The odd features are a map of the psyche. Dilo's bubble ears, standing in for inner molecules, project emotion. The more trouble you carry, the longer the ears grow, asking you to put a burden down and stop the private grind.

Mota, with an extra eye, stands for an extra choice. "When you see, understand, and know everything, it feels like people become very chaotic, very indignant," WHON WHON notes. In an era of information overload, not everything is worth digesting. Too much noise makes a person sensitive or lost.

WHON WHON watches the human world his own way, picking up fragments a cluttered day leaves behind. He believes unpredictable emotions are like atmospheric molecules, shapeless and floating. We are a speck of dust in the universe, yet each of us carries a cosmos.

The inflated emotions wash out into a colored negative, projecting daily life. In a recent collaboration with Zhong Ping Lu Story House, a stretch of pink glass stickers set the stage for his solo exhibition. He hopes the urgency in the pictures still lets a viewer enter slowly.

Seemingly illusory cartoons hold the more genuine feelings, mixing what is real and what is invented, color and darkness, into the long-eared rabbit and the three-eyed bear. The animals bring a touch of joy; the speed of the stroke and the afterimage hint at hurry or anxiety.

Listen with bubble-like ears,
See with the third eye.

Let us enter this universe, to shout, to empty our minds, to float and drift, slowly.

WHON WHON’s art is less a feast than an invitation to a slower hour. The pictures say that in a busy life there is still a reason to pause, to look, and to keep the chaos instead of hiding it. Through the "WHON WHON Universe," he offers a room to slow down, to feel, and to stay awake. The pink glass at Zhong Ping Lu Story House was one public door. The bubble ear and the third eye are the ones he keeps drawing after the show comes down. Slowing down, he has said, is not a death sentence. It is a chance to breathe. The meteor stays the color of the day you actually had.