20 ºC depicts a fallen tree laying on a sparse landscape under a dark sky. We view the withered tree from ground level, so that we face directly the dense gnarls of withered branches that curve and knot into themselves. Although it is difficult to make out any defined forms within the tangle of branches, up close it is clear that the artist has paid significant attention to the portrayal of depth and the falling of light and shadow on the smallest twig. This blasted landscape has a macabre quality, heightened by the artist’s heavily-carved sky at the top of the composition. Areas of the sky are left uncarved to convey abstracted clouds, which introduce softer curves in contrast to the sharp forms in the foreground.

Landscapes emerged as a prominent theme in Lai’s practice during the eighties after a tumultuous end to a romantic relationship, which inspired the artist to focus on “the vastness of life” through studies of nature and the environment. When he returned to Chinese ink painting in 2001, he became preoccupied with the subject of rocks, where he found beauty in nature’s sculptural forms. 20 ºC is closely related to these paintings in its evocation of the tree’s carcass less so as a documentation of the artist’s view than an attempt to capture his subject as a dramatic and monstrous product of nature’s life cycles. His treatment of the woodcut technique is also remarkably similar in results to his ink paintings—heavily outlined and with black almost always used in singularity—demonstrating the artist’s constant back-and-forth between the two mediums and his thinking of the affinities shared between them.