SENSE OF DISTANCE

In Dong Wenfei's painting, "anonymity" is not a retreat, but an actively constructed strategy of distance. By erasing faces and weakening identities, the artist removes the viewer’s inclination to ask "who," and instead invites them to perceive "what." As Georg Simmel pointed out in The Secret and the Secret Societies, secrecy is a social form that creates tension between revelation and concealment, thus generating new possibilities for communication. Dong's work translates this tension into the structure of painting: anonymity is not a withdrawal but a different way of entering experience.

In her latest works, scenes are often presented through fragmented, partial glimpses: the bending of an arm, the gesture of writing, or a body partially obscured by curtains and shadows. The disappearance of faces is not an absence, but a translation. Emmanuel Levinas emphasized that the face constitutes an ethical manifestation, but in this case, the concealment of the face forces the viewer to move beyond the superficiality of identity and directly confront the inner nature of experience. Thus, the anonymized gestures and objects (such as books, flowers, and fabric) become vessels of secrecy—the meaning of the image often lies not in "what" it is, but in "how" it affects us, how it "pierces" us.

The use of anonymity is not merely a formal strategy, but closely related to the artist's personal experi- ence. After relocating to Hangzhou, Dong Wenfei adopted a near-reclusive lifestyle, with face-to-face interactions diminishing and virtual communication becoming more prominent. In this context, the practice of esotericism became another method of observation: people, driven by their desires and anxieties, reveal their deepest secrets, which are then translated into the language of painting. These fragments of disclosure do not manifest in direct narrative forms but appear in the guise of gestures, veiled bodies, or still-life objects, anonymously positioned as portals through which the viewer enters the experience.

Thus, Sense of Distance is not only a mode of viewing but also a restructuring of experience. Within the tension between anonymity and secrecy, the viewer is invited into a new sensory relationship—no longer gazing at the "identity" of another, but instead, touching those life fragments that are hidden yet authentically present, within the safety of the maintained distance.

* Levinas, Emmanuel. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969.
* Simmel, Georg. The Sociology of Georg Simmel. Edited and translated by Kurt H. Wolff. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1950. (Originally published 1908).