External Light Gathers In
Artist: Yang Weihan, Zhang Daiqing
Jul 26 – Oct 8, 2025
traverse
Warehouse No.9, 53 Banjieta Village, Chaoyang District, Beijing
Artists Yang Weihan and Zhang Daiqing delve into seemingly ephemeral phenomena and experience, particularly the infinity and tangibility of light. Their collaboration explores how the combination of glass and photography can generate new forms of representation, capturing the subtleties of change in the surrounding environment and recording the invisible scale of time through images. External Light Gathers In is an extension of the artists’ previous practices as well as an experimentation in taking the exhibition itself as a continuous process of creation.
The title External Light Gathers In is drawn from a quote in Dream Pool Essays by the scholar Shen Kuo of the Song Dynasty, describing how a concave mirror gathers sunlight: the surface of yangsui (solar spark lighter) is concave; when held towards the sun, the light converges inward.” This ancient observation of optical principles resonates with the image-making mechanisms in the works: through apertures, mediums, and time, sunlight gathers at a specific spot on Earth, becoming an agency of human sensation
During the first month of the exhibition, a series of works will be produced and installed on site, responding to the changing nature of light and time. The exhibition’s titular work, External Light Gathers In, is an installation composed of layered photographic prints. On the second floor of traverse, the artists transform one of the rooms into a darkroom. Rather than using a camera, they capture natural light seeping through the ceiling pipe directly onto light-sensitive paper. Each image varies according to subtle shifts in weather, brightness, and exposure time, preserving the external flux on the surface of the photographic paper. The artists will position hand-blown lens-like glass throughout the space, using their refractions to expose photosensitive paper and create “portraits” of the site. Several panes of the original factory windows at traverse will also be replaced with silver gelatin glass plates made during the exhibition, embedding the act of image-making into the architectural structure.
The exhibition also features works from the early stages of the artists’ collaboration, in which glass—a medium once common in early photography but rarely used nowadays—converges with traditional photographic techniques. In Eclipse, the specks and lines that resemble celestial movement are, in fact, flaws and scratches left during the glassblowing process. Negative images on dry plates are presented alongside their positive prints; some of the plates are handcrafted by the artists, with subtle textures and irregular marks—absent in industrial glass—emphasizing the materiality of the medium. Glass workshops and ware also become subjects of the photographs, pointing to the relationship between material and theme. Yang Weihan and Zhang Daiqing transform and accumulate different forms of the image through the medium of glass, expanding the visual dimension of matter and exploring the interstices of phenomena and perception through the interactions of technique, material, and environment.