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| Anxiong Qiu Born in 1972 in Sichuan, China. Lives and works in China. Shan Hai Jin (Classic of Mountains and Seas) is an old book of geography edited into its present form sometime before the 2nd century AD. The book describes the wide world beyond the Middle Realm, complete with a catalogue of desirable natural products, strange creatures and variant forms of humanity. It provides a vision of the known world at the time, and titillates man’s imagination about the magic of the unknown beyond. Its naïve description of creatures blessed with special powers is the model for Qiu in this story of the contemporary world and its politics. The New Book of Mountains and Seas is allegorical in its reference to historical events, the narrative takes military incursion of Western powers into pre-modern China as the entry point into a world invaded by strange beasts with alien powers. The story gradually leads into recent post-9-11 events thinly masked as a fantastic tale. Looking at a distance into today's world, relieves the viewer from claustrophobic identification, and sets him adrift in the strange universe of contemporary life. This is what one sees by adopting a pre-modern eye, and the artist seems to suggest that few essential advantages have been gained by populating the world with all the monsters we have created. In the medium of film, where both time and space are extended beyond the common experience, it is the power of looking into the distance that stirs the imagination. The perspective Qiu brings to the viewer cuts across historical time, and lifts him to a distant vantage point. From this point the artist sees the ills of our times with greater clarity, and may better identify his artistic responsibilities. Remembering the vast expanse of sky and sea in the artist's paintings, it becomes evident that Qiu has been training his vision for some time; he has arrived at this perspective by stretching his vision into the horizon, where all the world's dramas are but distant tremors, and all human strife are inconsequential disputes within the greater order of the universe. Chang Tsong-Zung Curator, co-founder of the Asia Art Archive in Hong Kong and guest professor of Visual Culture Institute, China Art Academy.  Download CV |  Minguo Landscape, 2007 The New Book of Mountains and Seas, Part1, 2006 |
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