Qiu Jie

signed and dated 2000 in Chinese, titled in Chinese and French

London, Saatchi Gallery, The Revolution Continues: New Chinese Art, 2008, pp. 120-121, illustrated in colour 

Qiu Jie, Oeuvres choisies, Shanghai, 2006, pp. 56-57, illustrated in colour

Since the work is a composite of multiple square pieces of paper, the artist probably used pins to secure the separate sheets together into the final rectangle as he drew. Thus, there are pinholes to the corners of the square pieces of paper and sets of two small circular marks in the vicinity of the mother's bag and of the monkey kind's wand. There are also various minor creases found throughout the work, features which are inherent to the medium. The largest crease is found to the upper right section of the work, which can be assumed to be the original condition since it does not disrupt the continuity of the composition. Apart from such characteristics inherent to the medium and the working method of the artist, the work is generally in good condition overall. Framed under perspex and not examined out of frame.
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Born in Shanghai in 1961, Qiu Jie works under the pen name "Ta Xiang Shanren." In 1978, he tested into the fine arts department of the Shanghai Light Industry Institute, and upon graduation he took a position as artistic designer with the Shanghai Yi Biao Company. In May of 1985 he mounted his first solo exhibition at the Xuhui District Cultural Center. In 1989, he entered the Haute Ecole des Arts et de Design in Geneva. In 1994, he earned his B.F.A. Since then he has worked on large-scale drawings and paintings.

Qiu Jie's massive 2000 work on paper Le Voyage vers I'Ouest (Journey to the West) measures three meters wide by two meters high, and it perfectly expresses his decades of history with cultural collision and intermingling in both form and content. This giant work is full of rich details, which seem to express the sort of master narratives typically associated with classical painting; but these lifelike details paradoxically function to endow the piece with even greater mystery and obscurity. The title Le Voyage vers L'Ouest  seems to align with the depiction of Sun Wukong - the monkey king protagonist of the novel of the same name - depicted in this work; behind the beautiful monkey king appear the cranes which signify longevity in Chinese folk painting, but around his feet appear a ring of water vessels, foreign and Chinese. The mother-and-child motif which appears at left obviously derives from the Madonna and Christ-child image so common in European religious painting; but this "Madonna" is dressed in the clothing of the Chinese socialist worker. The mother and child ride on the back of a bull, and next to them squats a rabbit. Behind them runs a cloud-like decorative pattern, and at bottom left appears a red plum - details throughout the painting reach a level of realism somehow unthinkable. But Qiu Jie, whose pen name literally translates as "Mountain Man from a Distant Village," is here exploring the fusions and diffusions that underlie East-West cultural encounter.

This contradiction manifests itself equally well in Qiu Jie's distinctive form and technique. Drawing is generally seen as a preparatory stage to proper artistic creation, and exhibitions of drawings are often taken as collections of "practice sketches." But Qiu Jie instead not only takes drawing as an end in itself, but enlarges it to dimensions typically reserved for the more venerable genres of Western historical painting. Drawing is thus put to uses not yet exhausted, while historical painting is likewise pushed in new directions. In Le Voyage vers L'Ouest the straightforward, sketchy style in which the mother and child are depicted contrasts powerfully with the seemingly three-dimensional depiction of the rabbit and its fur. The work's classical charm is thus permeated by contemporary elements, just as pronounced Eastern symbols are mixed with images from Western culture.

This notion of finding a new path common throughout Qiu Jie's technique and subject matter is not without connection to his life experience. Born in the 1960s, Qiu Jie's earliest experience with painting came from the propagandistic images of the Cultural Revolution. Think from there to his experience as a commercial designer, and one starts to see an exaggeration that owes as much to propaganda painting as it does to advertising, and perhaps also accounts for his meticulous attention to details. In the 1980s, Qiu Jie began a life of moving back and forth, in and out of China. Today, he drifts effortlessly between a quiet home in Switzerland and his rapidly developing hometown of Shanghai. In an era of overheated consumption, he has chosen instead to spend a year or so on each of his works. He uses the simplest possible tools to draw - paper and pencil - attending to his work with matchless precision. By mixing traditional Chinese painterly aesthetics and the techniques of propaganda painting with elements drawn from Western oil painting, Qiu Jie has created a distinctive, cool-headed, tense, and unapologetically oversized artistic style.