Yun-Fei Ji, whose new solo exhibition “The Intimate Universe” just opened at the Wellin Museum of Art in upstate New York, is an able storyteller.

The exhibition’s oxymoronic title is apt: in single framed works and across long scrolls unfolds a detailed contemporary world rendered proximate to us by the artist’s lively hand and sense of empathy both for his subjects and, more widely, the expansive culture of which they are part and which advances inexorably at the crossing of history and the present. Yun-Fei Ji mainly depicts scenes and people he sees on field trips to China (he is from Beijing but now based in Ohio). In his imagery one detects the mundane, urgent, humorous and superstitious elements which help compose daily physical and emotional life: A man takes a nap in a three wheeled bicycle; there are displaced people with sacks on their backs (those who moved from their ancestral homes in Badong due to the construction of the Three Gorges dam); a series of framed works shows furniture and belongings set about outdoors; there is a party secretary whose dreams trouble him; and in “The Village and Its Ghosts”, Yun-Fei pictures a village he has retreated to from the city and also in his mind’s eye. The scroll concludes with a memorable scene of monstrous apparitions: a skeleton accompanied by ghoulish and anthropomorphic figures processing along—part turtle, clam, shrimp or fly.

The assembled works range in date from 2009 to 2016, including commissions from the Museum itself. The scrolls were left uncovered by glass, allowing the texture of watercolor and ink on xuan paper to be seen directly. At the heart of the show is a somber grey room, its walls lined with a scroll from this year containing widely spaced, skeletal figures and called “After the First Seventh Day”; rendered almost entirely in grey and white with apparently a freer hand than the other works, its content is untethered to a clear narrative—thin strands of hair float as if the figures were under water. Given due attention, Yun-Fei’s works impress one with their rare fantasia, and as messengers about real life and its endings.

Yun-Fei Ji, “Man with a Large Mouth”, ink on Xuan paper, 39.4 x 35.9 cm, 2009. The René Balcer and Carolyn Hsu-Balcer Collection. ©Yun-Fei Ji.

Yun-Fei Ji, “The Village and Its Ghosts”, (detail) ink and watercolor on Xuan paper, 34.3 x 18.1 m, 2014. Courtesy of the artist and James Cohan, New York. ©Yun-Fei Ji.

Yun-Fei Ji, “The Intimate Universe”, exhibition view at The Wellin Museum of Art.

Yun-Fei Ji, “Party Secretary’s Dream”, (detail) ink and watercolor on Xuan paper, 38.6 x 104.4 cm, 2015.Courtesy of the artist and Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp.

Yun-Fei Ji, “The Intimate Universe”, exhibition view at The Wellin Museum of Art.