The bonfire on the drifting ice illuminates a strange world: a hunter lowers his gaze to the arrow about to be released, carefully assessing its accuracy; a raven perches on a withered branch, looking back at its companions still circling above; as if an uprooted land were submerged in seawater, the distant mountain contours glow with a light that seems to waver between dusk and dawn… This is the “Wilderness” as depicted by Li Wendong.
If the traditional landscape world was the aspirational retreat of scholars and hermits, then the realm illuminated by the firelight in this painting reveals a parallel world overlooked by historical narratives. It does not stem from an archaeological impulse, but rather, is annotated through imagination—an artist of today recalling the fate of a frontier hunter.
Li Wendong, employing a combination of tempera and fresco techniques, repeatedly rewrites the narratives within his paintings, becoming the creator of the history depicted within them. The disappearance of an elephant in one place may, perhaps, signify the emergence of a horse in another trace.