Catch in the Frosty Grove

Artist: Liying Dong
Original title: 《寒竹幻捕》
Medium: Xuan paper
Size: 69cm * 69cm
Year: 2024

In cool blue-green tones, winter bamboo emerges through drifting mist—an ethereal, illusory realm. Here, the ancient trope of “mantis stalking cicada, oriole behind” unfolds: a chain of watchers watched, set against winter’s seeming stillness. Beneath the cold, vaporous surface, the work unveils worldly ambition as empty illusion, prompting quiet reflection on obsession and the ceaseless cycles of human calculation.