Exhibiting for the first time in Hong Kong, Platform China’s represented artist Qiu Ruixiang is showing a curate selection of oil paintings and paper works realized between 2008-2013. The solo exhibition highlights the artist’s extraordinary skill in utilizing the darkest hue of pigments in creating setting pervaded by a gloomy mist, an enigmatic aura inhabited by solitary and intriguing figures. Each anonymous character in his painting bears some resemblance of others, however they are all unique individuals, caught in a pensive state often interspersed with silent emotions.
Qiu’s practice is distant from typical contemporary practices. One can hardly relates his work with Western or other Chinese painters in any period. The artist spends most of his time in his studio where he performs a continuous introspection through the process of painting. By painting continuously, he allows the process to determine the visual settings of the work, with the physical attributes to dictate the meaning of the work.
Portrait-depiction is regarded a vehicle for sentimental transmission, while he believes the process of painting is the best way to reach his innermost part. The artist unintentionally creates the figures inhabiting his visual world. Driven by daily surroundings and emotions, the clash of pigments shapes the appearances and gestures of these figures. Under the aura of solitude created by the dark abstract background, they seem lost and aimless. However, since these figures are reflections of our daily experience, they are intimately connected with collective reveries. Qiu believes the interpretation of viewers overrides the meaning given by the artist himself. Thus, even the artist refuses to define these anonymous figures, the visual combination of figures and background in the artist’s work is appealing and impactful for the ability to transcend superficial decipherment and provoke sentiments that enables a dialogue between the artist and viewers.
