Qiu Shihua

Since the early 1980s, Qiu Shihua has been painting mainly landscapes. This oil painting takes from a spatial perspective linked to European art and brought back to the discourse of nature in traditional Chinese painting.

Extract from The Sky in the Landscape, Chang Tsong-zung, 2000

“Qiu Shihua’s plain looking landscape paintings have much in common with an empty sky. They shift with the viewer’s changing moods, and they resonate with the viewer’s gaze […]. It is natural sceneries that these paintings are based upon; often simple fields and silent plains that merge with open sky. Land and sky do not fracture in a sharp divide, but mirror each other. […]

The visual experience of Qiu’s art suggests a visionary dimension, or perhaps even a hint of the sublime.  How is this achieved and why do the paintings have this mysterious quality? They are, after all, straightforward scenes of nature. And suppose we are able to understand the magical quality of the subtle scenes, […] and which have to be taken on trust as mysterious visions of nature. […]

The artistic success of Qiu Shihua is to have crossed the gap separating representation, an illusion of reality, and an experience of reality. […] The mysterious presence of nature is evoked by testing the limits of illusory representation, so that the viewer feels he is brought into contact with something more substantial than mere representation. […]”