In his Beijing studio, SHI GUOWEI speaks about festivals without spectacle. His new body of work, debuting at Fotografiska Shenzhen this October, looks past pageantry to the traces left behind. An installation view from 2026 captions the presentation as \u201cShi Guowei: Festa,\u201d signaling the focus that now preoccupies him: what remains when the crowd thins, the music fades, and time resumes its quiet accounting.<\/p>\n
On the wall hangs Drum<\/em> (2026), a large tableau of red ceremonial drums arrayed on a grubby floor beneath a nondescript pillar. The tilted vantage feels casual, yet the instruments hum with a residual charge. \u201cThey were perhaps being played just moments ago,\u201d says Shi, \u201cthen cast aside while people moved on to other festivities.\u201d The maroon lacquer is mottled; the gilding has dulled; the faces are stark white, the characters \u767e\u5e74\u884c (\u201ca hundred-year journey\u201d) discernible on top. Across the studio, a smaller square study of rock echoes the same plum-toned burgundy\u2014an afterimage linking his long-standing attention to stone and shrub with this turn toward human celebration\u2019s residue.<\/p>\n Nearby, Bridge<\/em> (2026) turns the palette green. Round, scalloped cement pavers\u2014cast to resemble lotus leaves\u2014seem to float on a pond. Algae lends a jade cast; the water glimmers deep turquoise; brilliant chartreuse wavelets breach the calm from the upper left. The disturbance, he notes, came from artificial light reflected from festivities just outside the frame. \u201cIt was a tremendously crowded day,\u201d he recounts. \u201cI had to wait hours to capture this view without people.\u201d The intrusion of yellow is intentional: \u201cOn an ordinary day, the water would simply mirror a blue sky. But here there is something invasive. A quiet space has been forcibly entered. I wanted to convey that uneasy contrast.\u201d<\/p>\n Shi\u2019s method begins with a black-and-white photograph, which he paints over with water-based pigment in exacting layers, an approach he calls an \u201cauthentic illusion.\u201d Trained at Tsinghua University\u2019s Academy of Arts & Design and later at the Fachhochschule Dortmund, he revives the largely obsolete technique of hand-coloring not toward mere verisimilitude but toward what he terms \u201cfelt truth.\u201d The patience shows: over months, a single exposure is revisited until color seems to loosen the image from the instant of the shutter. As he puts it, \u201csome things require time.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFor some time I have found myself drawn to festivals,\u201d Shi says, \u201cbut not their pageantry. What holds me is a quality I encounter around them, or after them.\u201d That sensibility threads through titles across recent years, from Fireworks II<\/em> (2025) to Garden II<\/em> (2024), and into works-in-progress: a flamingo boat half veiled by riverside shrubs; a couple on a canopied boat glimpsed through trees, part colored and part grayscale. \u201cFestivals are understood as collective occasions of happiness and hope,\u201d he adds. \u201cBut I am interested in what an individual experiences. Private feelings can diverge greatly from the noise and commotion. I want to ask what joy actually is.\u201d<\/p>\nHand-coloring as duration<\/h2>\n