I recently visited an exhibition of contemporary ink painting, "Ink after the contemporary". The works remained rooted in traditional ink techniques, yet presented a surprising mix of East and West — Japanese pigments alongside horses, ravens, fairies, even echoes of Van Gogh, Lucian Freud and even Brueggel. I was pleasantly overwhelmed.
On my third slow walk through the gallery, something shifted.
I was suddenly transported to the small kitchen in my parents' apartment, where I lived from birth through my student years. There had been a picture on the wall, just under the wall radio.
It struck me as strange. Usually, such returns to the past are triggered by scent. This time, it was purely visual. The image I remembered was a mass-produced piece of USSR home décor. And yet, it surprises me even now that within the rigid framework of Socialist Realism, someone approved this graphic, minimalist still life so far removed from the dominant figurative norms, almost questioning the genre itself. I suspect that once Le Corbusier was accepted as a legitimate architect in Soviet Russia, a certain tolerance for Purist ideas quietly entered the fine arts as well.
Every morning, I would look at that image while drinking tea and eating white bread with butter and cheese before school. From 7:20 to 7:40 a.m., the radio broadcast Pioneer Dawn. The opening bugle — tu-tu-tu-tuuuu — "Pioneers Dawn on air. Good morning, folks!" And there you were, staring at a simple composition: a glass with a few bubbles, a sharp-edged plate with fruits. Day after day after day. You didn't think about it — you simply observed. It wasn't subversive in any obvious way, but its aesthetic stood apart from the surrounding visual realities. It offered a quiet mental break from sameness, even if you never fully understood or embraced it.
Almost forty years later, I found myself transported back to that kitchen. Li Dan's Vessel as Trace evoked the same feeling — once unconscious, now something I can finally articulate. The vessel holds time within it, like a clock endlessly turning, marking cycles that repeat without escape. It reflects that we cannot and probably shouldn't try to break free from the rhythms of the everyday, but it doesn't mean it makes things unnoticeable.
For me, this carries a sense of tension — a search for something which would vessel daily reality itself. Li Dan's work sharpens this experience. Its graphic clarity elevates figuration into a conceptual space. Tiles establish rhythm, while the vessel creates foundation. The vessel becomes the keeper of time and patterns introduce a quiet melodic undertone. The sharp brushstrokes, balanced with diluted contrasts of black and beige, create a narrative that is both precise and warm, grounded yet expressive.
Can such observation help us step out of the mundane? I believe it can, even if only for a few seconds.
This echoes a fundamental principle of Chinese ink painting: the object is placed at the centre, yet the reflection extends beyond it to the flow of life itself.
Perhaps this is why Li Dan's still lifes resonate with me so deeply. He preserves the core of a reflective painting tradition, while boldly shaping it through his own language, inviting us to pause and to feel the quiet flow of life unfolding beside us.
Singapore, March 2026