Liu Mengzhou's The Trail Forward

A squared canvas of meditative proportion, Liu Mengzhou's *The Trail Forward* arrives through John Richard as a work whose very title implies movement held in stillness — the tension between journey and arrival rendered in oil on a pine support. At twenty-five and a half inches in each direction, its perfect geometry invites an almost architectural reading, the depth of two inches asserting the work's physical presence on the wall rather than mere decoration of it. The painterly surface, built in oil, rewards sustained attention, shifting with the quality of available light in the manner of all serious picture-making.