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Xiao Jiang, In the Studio, 2022. Courtesy of the artist and Karma.

When describing my yearning for privacy and newfound revulsion to constant connectivity to a friend, he asked: How do you pray? I said, Look at paintings. One such pause came from the landscape paintings of China’s Jinggangshan mountains in Xiao Jiang’s exhibition Continuous Passage. If there are any, most of Jiang’s figures look away, or he obscures their faces, or they turn to their book, a corner. With titles like Strolling, Resting, Country Road, Jiang isn’t subtle about his leisurely aims. Yet there’s more at work than a series of luncheons in the garden. One triptych of hefty forest-green mountains, rendered in Giotto geometries, covers an entire wall; but in the right corner of the burlap canvas lurks a utility pole. No matter how alone we think we are, how absorbed in our deliberations, there will always be an intrusion. So, I turned to a press release quote about material choice: “For Xiao, burlap forces his process to slow down, a quality he matches in his compositions, in which muted colors are heavily layered, therefore imperceptible to an impatient eye.…” I read this and Jiang’s paintings two ways. One, the improbability of silence in our impatient, techno-surveilled state; and two, only those who layer in patience will achieve a quality of retreat. The mute world that Jiang depicts is at once stark and poignant, humbling and contemplative, and so a place of peace, which is also not a fixed place but a place that must be continually sought and walked toward. A passage through, not a location where.