Galerie Karsten Greve is delighted to present Qiu Shihua Visible… Invisible at the beginning of the new year, making it the third solo exhibition shown in Karsten Greve’s Cologne gallery space featuring works by Chinese contemporary artist Qiu Shihua. This is Qiu Shihua’s seventh one-man show with Galerie Karsten Greve, which has represented and presented the artist since 2015. Eleven oil paintings created between 2006 and 2019 will be on display, as will twelve works on paper dating from 2018 and 2019 to be premiered here.
At first glance, the works by Chinese artist Qiu Shihua seem to be monochrome paintings. However, out of nowhere, from the all-encompassing white-on-white that covers the natural hue of the raw canvas like a transparent, white veil, weak contrasts and vague contours emerge. In transparent glazes, Qiu Shihua makes landscape motifs appear and disappear. Shades condense into hills and valleys, groups of trees and forest silhouettes, mountain ridges and rocky precipices. The sun flickers as a luminous spot and a guide in impenetrable banks of fog. Slight color modulations on a whitish underlying tone break through the monochrome and, upon closer inspection, reveal themselves to be a superimposition of delicately colored layers of pale gray, blue, pink, and yellow. “In my pictures I try to give expression to visions beyond the visible. But I also try to depict things completely and at the same time vividly. 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,” says Qiu Shihua about his paintings.
