Xu Lei

China Guardian Auction, Beijing, November 15, 2001, Lot 975
Acquired by the present owner from the above sale

Chen Danqing, "Fable of Image," Xu Lei, Hebei, 2000, pp. 4 illustrated in color
Today Art Museum, Beijing, Oriental Art/People, 1st edition, 2006

Xu Lei belongs to an influential school of post-traditional figurative painters, bringing the quality of literati painting from loftiness to a state of pessimistic elegance.  Xu often adapts a stage setting into his frame by using elements from Chinese material culture, sometimes reminiscent of the set or background used in old film studios of the 1930s. In Flower over the Ocean, Xu’s most representative work to date, the artist presents a poetic, claustrophobic and mysterious world populated by a horse imprinted with the very flowers that swirl about him in the water. In compositions such as this, Xu offers new possibilities to traditional Chinese painting as he creates imagined worlds without reference to a glorified antiquity.