Between the Seen and the Vanishing: Shichao Zhou Brings ‘All the Colors We Cannot Name’ to Los Angeles

LAPost/San Gabriel, Calif. (Sept. 11, 2026) — By Richard Ren/LAPost — What does a painting need to reveal in order to be understood?

For Chinese artist Shichao Zhou, the answer is not necessarily a recognizable object.

His paintings can suggest landscapes, water, sky, architecture or flowers. But just as the viewer begins to identify an image, it seems to recede into color, light and brushwork. Objects hover somewhere between appearance and disappearance.

That uncertainty is at the heart of “ALL THE COLORS WE CANNOT NAME,” Zhou’s solo exhibition now on view in San Gabriel.

Presented by The Scholart Selection, one of the better-known and influential art galleries in the Los Angeles area, the exhibition opened Sept. 11 and runs through Sept. 19. It brings together 10 oil paintings from different stages of Zhou’s work over the past five years.

The paintings vary considerably in color, light and visual atmosphere. Some are light, bright and almost transparent. Others are darker, denser and more contemplative.

Seen together, the 10 works do more than document different moments in Zhou’s recent career. They reveal an artist continually testing and reshaping his visual language.

When the Image Begins to Disappear

Zhou’s paintings do not begin with a clearly defined subject.

Instead, he works through repeated adjustments of color, brushwork and space, searching for what he calls the “state” of a painting.

“The core of my work is to move beyond formal resemblance and seek the spirit of things,” Zhou said. “I use color to express emotion and create space through the interplay of presence and absence.”

He draws on the flexibility and tension of color while incorporating the traditional Chinese aesthetic of suggestion, restraint and leaving space for what is not explicitly shown.

“I want to strip away the excessive depiction of concrete forms and dissolve rigid, clearly defined contours,” he said, allowing the painting to move beyond straightforward landscape representation and toward what he describes as a more poetic and lingering visual quality.

That approach is particularly evident in “CAR 008” (2022).

Light blue, gray-white and pink overlap to form an airy, translucent field. Yellow, orange and green strokes move through the composition. Faint vertical marks seem to suggest architecture, reflections or some distant landscape.

But Zhou never allows any one interpretation to dominate.

The viewer seems to recognize something without being able to say exactly what it is.

The painting consequently occupies an unsettled territory — not entirely representational, but not fully abstract either.

In “CAR 039” (2023), that uncertainty goes further.

Blue-green spreads across the canvas, with touches of pink, pale violet and small areas of brighter color floating within it. Associations with water, mist or sky briefly emerge before dissolving back into the color.

Almost nothing can be definitively identified. Yet light, air, movement and emotion remain palpable.

This may be one of the most compelling aspects of Zhou’s work: as recognizable forms recede, color begins to perform the work that imagery once did.

A viewer may not be able to explain exactly what is being seen, but can still sense changes in light, space and mood.

“Like Music, It Should Not Be Overexplained”

Zhou is reluctant to provide viewers with a definitive interpretation of his paintings.

During a conversation about the works, he compared the experience of looking at a painting to listening to music.

Some visual impressions, he suggested, belong to instinct and feeling. A viewer might see clouds, flowers, rocks or a pond. Another might think of the water surfaces and shifting light associated with Impressionism.

But trying to explain every element in words can actually diminish the experience.

“It is like music,” Zhou said. “If you explain it too much with language, you can destroy it.”

That idea is embedded in the exhibition’s title, “ALL THE COLORS WE CANNOT NAME.”

The inability to name something does not mean that it lacks meaning. Rather, Zhou leaves the final interpretation open to the viewer.

A painting does not necessarily need to provide an answer. It can instead become an open visual space into which viewers bring their own experiences.

From Realist Training to a Language Between East and West

Born in Qingdao, China, Zhou graduated from the mural-painting program in the Design Department of Shandong University of Arts in 1989.

He began drawing at the age of 3 and later pursued formal artistic training, eventually combining teaching with his own studio practice. He retired from teaching in March of this year after spending most of his adult life in painting and art education.

His current style, therefore, did not emerge from a rejection of realism.

It developed gradually from rigorous academic training in realistic painting toward a visual language somewhere between representation and abstraction.

Zhou said he has sought to combine Western approaches to color with the Eastern tradition of creating atmosphere and suggestion.

Impressionism has also been an important influence.

For Chinese artists of his generation, Zhou said, the impact of Impressionism was particularly significant. Color could move beyond simply describing an object and instead become a vehicle for light, atmosphere and emotion.

Yet Zhou does not appear interested in simply reproducing the visual vocabulary of Impressionism.

Rather, his question seems to be: When the specific object begins to disappear, what remains?

Perhaps the answer is color, light and the act of looking itself.

From Marseille and Monaco to Los Angeles

Zhou’s artistic practice has long extended beyond China.

In 2010, at the invitation of Marseille Mayor Claude Gaudin, he presented a solo exhibition, “Sunrise · Marseille,” at the Marseille Contemporary Art Center in France.

In 2016, he held “Golden Time,” an exhibition of oil paintings at the Yacht Club de Monaco.

In 2013, he collaborated with the Italian luxury house Salvatore Ferragamo on a globally limited-edition silk scarf. That same year, his painting “Far Light” was collected by Pope Francis at the Vatican.

His work has since continued to move between Europe, China and the United States.

The San Gabriel exhibition represents another step in that international trajectory, bringing paintings made over the past several years into the American art environment.

For Zhou, however, the significance goes beyond simply exhibiting in another country.

“I have always hoped to promote contemporary Chinese art and Chinese culture in the United States,” he said. “I want to communicate with people here and allow them to see another side of Chinese painting.”

From Marseille and Monaco to California, his career has unfolded across different cultural settings.

His work does not simply transplant Chinese imagery into a Western context, nor does it wholly adopt the language of contemporary Western art. Instead, it continues to search for a personal position between Eastern visual experience and Western traditions of color and light.

The Scholart Selection and a New Cultural Connection

The venue itself is an important part of the story.

The Scholart Selection, located on South Mission Drive in San Gabriel, is an established and influential art gallery in the Los Angeles area, known for its exhibitions and engagement with contemporary artists. Its curator and owner, Cindy Wang, is also a well-known Los Angeles art critic who has been active in evaluating artists and organizing exhibitions.

Until now, Wang said, the gallery’s exhibitions had primarily featured American artists.

Zhou’s exhibition marks the gallery’s first solo exhibition for an artist from mainland China.

“That is a first for us,” Wang said during the opening event.

For Wang, the exhibition carries a significance beyond the paintings themselves.

“As a Chinese person, I feel that being able to promote art in the United States, to enter the international art scene and become part of an international market, is very meaningful,” she said.

She hopes the exhibition can eventually lead to opportunities for more Chinese artists to present their work abroad.

“I hope we can bring more Chinese artists overseas,” Wang said, “so that the world can see our Chinese artists and their talent, and so that they can have better representation on the international stage.”

In that sense, Zhou’s arrival at The Scholart Selection is more than another addition to Los Angeles’ exhibition calendar.

It represents a concrete point of connection between a Chinese artist and the city’s diverse local art ecosystem.

An Artist Who Does Not Want to Repeat Himself

Zhou describes the vitality of art in simple terms: “The life of art lies in continuous innovation and transformation.”

That belief helps explain why the 10 paintings in this exhibition do not conform to a single visual formula.

Created over roughly five years, they move between brightness and darkness, recognizable landscape references and compositions dominated almost entirely by color, light and gesture.

Zhou said he does not want to repeat the artists who came before him — or repeat himself.

Each painting reflects the circumstances and state of mind of the moment in which it was created. As time and emotion change, so do the colors, rhythms and surfaces of the work.

He does not deliberately draw a fixed line between figurative and abstract painting.

What matters more is maintaining freedom in the process of seeing and making.

Layers of paint are applied, erased and built up. The marks preserve traces of the process itself, leaving the finished image open rather than completely resolved.

The paintings do not insist on a single landscape or a single answer.

They ask the viewer to stay.

A building may become a vertical trace. A sky may become an expanse of blue-green. Water, clouds and flowers may lose their boundaries.

What remains is not necessarily an object that can be named, but a sensation.

And in Los Angeles, a city where different cultures, visual traditions and artistic practices constantly intersect, that openness may be more valuable than a definitive answer.

Exhibition Information

“ALL THE COLORS WE CANNOT NAME”
Artist: Shichao Zhou
Dates: Sept. 11–19, 2026
Opening Reception: 11 a.m., Friday, Sept. 11
Venue: The Scholart Selection
417 South Mission Drive
San Gabriel, CA 91776