As a student at Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Arts, Wang Guangle would only paint between the hours of three to five in the afternoon, when he could study the beams of light that streamed across his studio floor. The experience was almost meditative, and bands of light became his subjects, the sole protagonists of his large, abstract canvases. Wang was born in 1976, the year that Mao died of a heart attack. Today, 20 years since his graduation, Wang’s subject has shifted from light beams to color gradations on textured surfaces. At Pace, a suite of Wang’s new paintings is on view. —Elena Clavarino