When the vines between picture book pages quietly trail into the soil of reality, and when watercolor-blurred constellations overlap with moonlight filtering through the canopy, we begin to hear the crisp resonance of nature colliding with fantasy. In the tranquil oasis of Bangkok’s bustling heart—Chatuchak Park—curator Huang Xiao and hand-drawn artist Luo Zihang have together woven a breathing artistic experiment: A Forest on Paper, Dreams Within Pages. This marks the second iteration of The Oneiric Series Exhibition.
Luo Zihang, a current MFA student at the International College of The Arts, Krirk University, wields his pen like awand, distilling dewdrops, cicada songs, deer shadows, and whispers of the wind—collected during forest walks—into two breathing picture books. Silver ferns unfurling their veins across the paper, and glow-in-the-dark forests outlined in fluorescent pigments, seem ready to shed stardust scented with fresh grass at the slightest touch.
Meanwhile, Professor Huang Xiao of the International College of The Arts, Krirk University—also the exhibition’s curator—has infused these illustrations with a heartbeat through poetry. Not only has she composed mist-like verses for each image, she has, with the precision of an archaeologist and the intuition of a poet, discovered several “dream entrances” within Chatuchak Park: the aerial root curtain of a century-old banyan tree, the reflective threshold of a lotus pond, the shadow theatre framed by moss-covered stones.
Once the picture books areplaced within these natural frames, the magic begins: waterfalls in the illustrations connect with real dewdrops to form chains of water; glowing moss on the pages echoes the forest floor’s fungal threads in twilight.
The Seam Between Reality and Illusion: A Forest on Paper, Dreams Within Pages
Curator: Dr. Huang Xiao
Photographer: Dr. Huang Xiao Poems: Dr. Huang Xiao
Picture Books’ Author: Mr. Luo Zihang
“The inspiration for this creation comes from my love for forests and my longing for a fantastical world. I want to use words to depict a real forest scene while incorporating some magical elements, allowing readers to feel the enchantment of nature.
During the conceptualization process, I first thought of the design of two books. One open book displays an illustration of a forest waterfall, while the other, closed book, is adorned with various forest creatures. This design creates a visual contrast and serves as a vehicle for the
subsequent fantastical elements. In a lush forest, a magical lake lies hidden, with two nature-themed fantasy books resting quietly by its shore. The covers of these books depict stories of forests and fantasy, as if they were treasures dropped from another world. Opening these books reveals illustrations of various forest wonders. They are like two magical gateways, transforming the forest into a fantastical realm. The waterfalls on the pages turn into real flowing water, and the forests on the covers come to life as vivid miniature worlds. The entire forest is filled with magic, as if stepping into a dreamlike world.
When the breeze blows,the pages rustle softly, as if telling the stories of the forest. The lake reflects the illustrations from the books, forming a beautiful picture. Sunlight filters through the gaps in the leaves, casting dappled shadows on the books, like little fairies dancing. This scene is like a living fairytale, where the fantastical elements from the books and the real forest blend perfectly. From the open pages, real waterfalls flow, while the closed covers sprout living plants. The entire forest is filled with magic, as if entering a dreamlike world. These two books are not just carriers of stories but also bridges connecting reality and fantasy. They lie quietly in the forest, waiting to be discovered, waiting to draw readers into this magical world. In this nature- filled fantasy world, dreams and reality intertwine, creating an enchanted forest paradise.”
– Luo Zihang
Selected Artworks and Photos:
Forest-Tongue Codex: A Fantastical Nature’s Manuscript Collection, A Myth Still Growing
By Dr. Huang Xiao
The Waterfall of Pages and the Flow of Narrative
The open pages are cloud-topped cliffs,
Where a drop of ink collapses into a galaxy of silver.
It is not a painting—but a flowing oracle,
That, guided by the wind, leaps into the unwritten poem of the lake’sheart.
Elves dance upon the sentences,
Building halls of light and water in the gaps between paragraphs.
If you touch these splashing droplets,
You will hear the trees whisper ancient secrets.
Look—words are melting upon the paper,
Converging into a river shimmering with phantom light.
When the elk lowers its head to drink,
Its mane is draped with ripples of verbs.
And the salmon, still wet with ink,
Suddenly flicks its silver tail, swimming toward
The closing margin—
Toward the other side of the story, seas yet unlit.
You and I stand upon the spine of the book,
Left ear hearing the rain of reality, right ear bathed in the sun of dreams.
As butterflies pass through the dusk of paper,
All boundaries begin to grow in reverse:
The waterfall flows back to the source of imagery,
The forest takes root anew among the punctuation.
Now, the entire forest turns its pages
To the rhythm of the elk’shoofbeats—
Every fallen leaf, a living title page
Kissed by the wind.
Ecological Record on the Cover
Beneath the gilded title’sgleam,
roots pierce through moonlight on vellum.
Weeds and lilies dance upon the fore-edge,
ferns surge from the binding’s seam,
spores carrying ancient fables.
That closed book rests silent on moss,
its cover no painted illusion—
but a true fragment of breathing forest,
every grain stretching with life.
Behold! A mushroom props up a tiny dome,
a minstrel stands on gill-lined steps,
reciting chapters never marked by ink.
His cloak is a dried maple leaf,
shedding pollen like musical notes when stirred.
When moonlight aligns its sights,
all sleeping buds
begin to chant in the tongue of elves.
Leaves tremble, turning for him
those primal ballads written on mist.
Now the spinemerges with the soil,
new sap pulses in the vellum’s folds.
Gold foil flows through roots as a starry stream,
every letter sprouts and grows—
this is a living autobiography
of the forest.
The Mirror-Lake Theater of Two Worlds
The lake is a mirror, an unopened door,
the moment wind ruffles the copperplate paper,
kites soar from the reflection—
they pull toward distances never walked.
Pond-skaters dance in gaps between illustrations,
skating silver trails, like sudden flashes of insight.
The book resting quietly on the shore
has its hidden chapters turned by the lake water.
Light leaps between lines,
transforming into spirits playing on the page.
When a cloud tumbles into the lake’sheart,
the whole forest suddenly begins
to read the sky’s manuscript in reverse.
If you gaze into the trembling center,
you will see yourself stepping into
another, inverted self—
his lapel stained with ink-dark algae,
his pupils reflecting unbound
chapters of the future.
Now the lake-mirror becomes a pop-up book, water-ripples the living binding thread.
Every wavelet recomposes the story, floating stars recite silent annotations:
reality and illusion are the front and back
of the same manuscript.
The Proofreading Art of Elves
They use dewdrops to correct
sunbeams printed askew by cicada songs.
The first rays of morning light
must pass through their fingers ’ refraction
before landing on the proper full stop.
They gently tuck stray dragon scales
back into fantasy chapters.
Those magics accidentally dropped into the mortal world
are quietly recorded by a patch of moss,
awaiting dusk to proofread the warmth of meaning.
Whenever a book spine trembles,
a leaf drifts down softly,
revealing invisible annotations and remarks—
perhaps some elder treant’s commentary,
or a footnote left by a star
that forgot its grammar.
They are not writers,
but menders of the world.
In every misalignment
between dream and reality,
they quietly delete, polish, rearrange,
letting every story fall upon
the most right page.
The Magic Gate
The rustling pages
turn lost fairytales in the wind.
Wind is not wind, but a messenger
bearing the forest’sprayers from the canopy.
Listen—that’s foxtail grass whispering,
telling of starry streams flowing from pages at night.
One page, one night, one world,
as wind passes, dreams begin.
This is not a book, but a gate,
a passage inscribed in the language of leaves.
To enter, no key is needed—
only belief that the forest does not lie.
There, light has a voice, murmuring ancient spells,
shadows are feathered, fluttering between mossy stones and stream-song.
Trees speak, lakes sing,
and you’ll forget who you were before,
like a life being rewritten.
Pine needles gleam emerald on the reality side,
yet shimmer with starlight on the dream side.
The book’s spine rests precisely on the border,
a traveler sits on the ground,
his left sleeve damp, his right bathed in sun,
the scent of tea drifting from unknown chapters.
Here, time is gently interrupted by page numbers.
When a butterfly passes through the dusk of paper,
all boundaries quietly soften,
sentences grow outward into rings,
commas hang with dew, question marks bud into blossoms.
You turn to the verse of sunset
and find twilight keeping a light on for you—
while the forest has never truly closed its pages.
Artist × Curator:
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The artist Luo Zihang holding his two picture books; The curator Huang Xiao
This exhibition is not merely a dialogue between book and forest—it is aritual of growth. During installation, living vines have already begun climbing along the picture frame edges, and rainforest snails have left silver trails across the book covers.
When a visitor, holding a dainty parasol, turns a corner and sees the illustrated unicorn’shorn aligned perfectly with the dewdrop on a real spider’s web—that very moment becomes a gentle pollination of reality by fairytale.
