Wang Jianwei, Production, single channel, color, stereo sound, 60’, 1996

Both Wang Xingwei’s Ji Gong and Duan Jianyu’s The Muse has Awoken No.3 both offer conspicuous comical impressions, which on the one hand, articulate a kind of literary comedy from the narrations of the figures on canvas, their expressions, motion, theatricality and etc., while stylistically – be it Wang Xingwei’s compositional momentum and the exaggeration rendered through brushwork, or Duan Jianyu’s kitsch and crass emphasis – give shape to the comedy of mannerism, providing theatricality for the language of painting. Thirdly, they are comical on a cultural history level as they have adopted the Baroque style to portray the Mad Monk and placed the Goddess on Dunhuang murals into modern countryside context, this kind of casual yet poignant fusion has taken the “La Comédie Humaine” approach to respond to the rapidly evolving Chinese society and the unsettled dust of cultural order.

Venus at the Outlets Mall was Qiu Xiaofei’s critical attempt to look at painting through the perspective of an object. The sculpture in his work is the one found in the outlets mall close to his studio, but the disproportional ratio in the night setting has made the sculptural replica into a referential point, what Qiu Xiaofei was more interested in commanding was the object in the painting, painting as the object, and the possible relationships between the object and the painting. In addition, he adjusted the sentimental qualities in these relationships on the pictorial, color and material levels. Eventually, the painting and the image, color and lighting, site and material became mutually interrupting yet congruent factors to the overall composition. This phase marked Qiu Xiaofei’s transition from “image” to “painting” when the physical quality of the painting is recognized and represented, could painting truly confronts today’s experience as a conventional vehicle, and Qiu Xiaofei’s recent works experiment on a different level as he preserves this medium. Qiu Xiaofei’s transition from being “academic” to “pictorial”, to “installation” and lastly returning to “painting”, seems to follow a logic against the artistic form, but one that embodies a true understanding of precedent and subsequent painting practices in contemporary Chinese art.

An overlapping time
1981 10 28 1982 3 23 1982 10 28 1983 3 23 1983 10 28 1984 3 23 1984 10 28 1985 3 23 1985 10 28 1986 3 23 1986 10 28 1987 3 23 1987 10 28 1988 3 23 1988 10 28 1989 3 23 1989 10 28 1990 3 23 1990 10 28 1991 3 23 1991 10 28 1992 3 23 1992 10 28 1993 3 23 1993 10 28 1994 3 23 1994 10 28 1995 3 23 1995 10 28 1996 3 23 1996 10 28 1997 3 23 1997 10 28 1998 3 23 1998 10 28 1999 3 23 1999 10 28 2000 3 23 2000 10 28 2001 3 23 2001 10 28 2002 3 23 2002 10 28 2003 3 23 2003 10 28 2004 3 23 2004 10 28