Qiu Shihua: Neiguan

Opening cocktail
on Saturday, January 13, from 5pm to 8pm

Following the success of our precedent exhibitions devoted to the Chinese painter Qiu Shihua, Galerie Karsten Greve Paris presents a new solo show featuring fifteen of the artist’s canvases and works on paper from 1995 until today.

Born in 1940 in Zizhong, in Sichuan province (China), Qiu Shihua began to paint, self-taught, from a very young age before studying at Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts. Despite his soviet-style education, the artist was familiar with the French and German schools of painting and practiced outdoor painting. By the time he began his studies, China’s ancient artistic and literary culture was increasingly side-lined by the Communist politics of the day. Under Mao’s leadership, traditional Chinese artists were under pressure to adapt their painting to Communist themes and styles, leaving little room for the intelligentsia to flourish. Illustrating posters for a living, Qiu Shihua was commissioned to create art in this vein too.

In an attempt to “give expression to visions beyond the visible”, Qiu Shihua offers a highly personal experience to each visitor that prioritises individual perception and consequently bestows greater critical powers on the viewer.2 Qiu Shihua represents a generation of artists concerned with the modernisation of traditional Chinese art and the adaptation of the techniques of Western art, between landscape painting and abstraction. Similar to the demands imposed by installations or environments and owing to the fact that his art is so difficult to reproduce, his work requires that we be physically present in order to truly experience it.3 In Qiu Shihua’s own words:

When the beholder enters the (picture) space, he will feel how real they are, and he will notice how what he sees changes every now and then, sometimes growing larger, sometimes smaller, depending on his inner state.