Afterlight

THE BLANC is proud to present Afterlight, the first exhibition of work by Shanghai-based artist Gao Yutao in the United States, curated by Leo Yuan. Comprising over thirty prints and video works, the exhibition frames Gao’s scanner-based “light painting” photography as a meditation on physical matter transformed into ephemeral energy.

Gao created these works using a scanner as his primary method of image-making, a medium the artist has worked with for over a decade. By repurposing its emitted light, he produces photographic images of found objects. Using time as a medium, he renders each work slowly and deliberately, at times dragging objects across the flatbed surface to “paint” the image through added light and the scanner’s residual glow.

On view in the exhibition is Gao’s Spectrum series, created in 2025. Gao places insect specimens and gemstones side by side on the scanner, transforming them into radiant bands of light that invert the relationship between the sacred and the mundane and reduce it to a pure state of luminosity. For example, in Nine Flies and Nine Purple Gems, Gao renders alternately placed insects and amethysts as discrete lines of the color spectrum.

By foregrounding his method of creation, the artist encourages viewers to concentrate on the act of seeing and discover new meanings in what they see. Across Gao’s work, this often takes the form of inverted relationships—large and small, sacred and profane, finite and infinite, eternal and fleeting. By deconstructing these oppositions, the artist redirects attention to the act of seeing itself, recalling the Zen notion of hui guang fan zhao—literally “turning the light inward”—a state of self-reflective awareness.

The exhibition is structured across the two rooms of the gallery. Visitors progress through an environment that transitions from brightness to shadow, which corresponds to the theme of light and darkness central to Gao’s work.

Installed in the gallery’s rear space, Gao’s video works elaborate upon the photographs’ themes of duration, mediation, and the act of looking. Dialogue: The Moon over the River on a Spring Night (2020) shows the artist reciting a 7th-century Chinese poem into his phone along the Rhine, with Siri responding line by line, presenting an exchange between classical literature and contemporary technology. In Peach Blossoms (2019), Gao uses a handheld scanner to slowly trace the branches of a flowering peach tree after his grandfather’s funeral, with the video recording the scanning process alongside images produced from it. Water Song - How Will the Full Moon Appear? (2023) features Gao shouting “I long to ride the wind and return, yet fear the jade towers above—so high, so cold!” while riding an amusement park swing, a verse from Prelude to Water Melody, by the 10th century poet Su Shi. Filmed on Gao’s birthday, the video was shot by a hovering drone shortly after the Covid lockdown lifted in China.

On View: February 19 - March 24, 2026

Gallery Hours: 11AM-5PM, Wed - Sat

Opening reception: 6-8pm, February 19

Location: THE BLANC, 15 East 40th Street, New York, NY 10016

Artist

Gao Yutao (b. 1988, Hunan, China) works and lives in Shanghai. He received his postgraduate degree from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 2019, where he was appointed Meisterschüler (honorary master student) under Professor Katharina Fritsch. Gao’s practice engages with themes of memory, time, and the everyday object. Working across photography, installation, video, and print, he seeks to poetically transform the mundane functionality of ordinary things,allowing them to generate new relationships and emotions.

Gao’s works have been exhibited at major art institutions in China and abroad, including Hangar Art Center, Belgium; Museum K21, Düsseldorf; Museum Folkwang, Essen; Kunstmuseum Solingen, Solingen; Grand Palais, Paris; and Jiushi Art Museum, Shanghai. Gao was nominated for the Jimei × Arles Discovery Award (2025), received the TOP20 Chinese Contemporary Photography Emerging Artist Award (2023), and won the 6th PhotoBrussels Prize (2022). He was also shortlisted for the 73rd Internationale Bergische Kunstausstellung (Solingen, 2019) and the Three Shadows Photography Award (Beijing, 2016).