Huang Kai’s comic-panel color woodcut prints depict playing with his friends as a child. In these now-disappeared alleyways (he still remembers all the names, Wolong Xiang, Tongjia Xiang, Hongxing Xiang), the children brandish their wooden guns with gusto, imitating the soldiers and sentries of old black and white movies; another child tries to use a tattered umbrella he has pulled from the garbage bin… In these woodcut prints, Huang Kai has carved the phone numbers of his long lost friends on the alley walls, and placed himself hiding bashfully in the corner. There are no pretty toys, no piano classes, and they are far from the organizing influence of the young pioneers. This eighties childhood was full of unstructured and meaningless joys, exiled in the alleys, a childhood whose memories were eventually wiped out by the chalk markings that designated the walls for demolition. These aimless, hectic youth and the chaotic street scenes seem like they are about to be swept away in the dust.

Huang Kai’s works emit a simple air of sincerity. The prints on thick handmade paper are covered with thick texture lines that send out a special ink flavor, making childhood seem so close yet so far. The artist’s innocent heart picks up on the land’s quest for its roots, feeling a buried desire to turn back the clock and return to that lonely childhood.

Exhibitions
2006
Here & Now, Exchange Exhibition, Netherlands;
The 6th Print Exhibition, ShanXi Province;
Scream before Burned-Contemporary Printmakers Group Show, Amelie Gallery;
Triptych Art Exhibition "Time, Space & I" .UK-Germany-China, Chinese Base, Beijing;
2007
Gathering Sandcastles, Chinese New Generation Artists Award Exhibition,YanHuang Art Museum;
2008
New Year China Print Art Festival,Beijing;
Memory or Reality Exhibitions, Amelie Gallery;
2009
No Fun without You Exhibitions, Amelie Gallery;
A New Mark in Chinese Print Art-Traversing the Labyrinth of the Contemporary Spirit, Hua Museum, ShenZhen.