Xu Lei

signed in Chinese and executed in 2006, framed

Private Collection, China
CHENGXUAN, Beijing, 7 November, 2007, lot 0321

Beijing, Today Art Museum, Veneer of the World - Xu Lei's Solo Exhibition, 20-29 Oct, 2013, p.187

Neo-classical Painting Five People Exhibition Album, Xizhitang Cultrual Publishing House.,Co Ltd, Taipei, p.116-117

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A main source of inspiration for Xu Lei's Gnostic images, Tang Xianzu's Peony Pavilion,is also among the artist's favourite motifs. Although the choice of topic shows Xu's spiritual affinity to Chinese literati painting traditions; the composition steps outside the traditional imagery. By making a reference to the dream world of René Magritte, a leading figure of Surrealism, Xu Lei creates his own version  of the Peony Pavilion. The elements which make up the painting lacka sense of reality.  The Peony Pavilion,   a setting where the original Peony Pavilion legend unfolded, is reduced to a view on a tabletop. The landscape in which the Pavilion resided has also vanished. The erotic references from the legend are merely hinted at via a  lone high-heeled shoe by the table. 

With his ingenious visual alchemy, the artist has created a world of fables where concrete objects are positioned in a surreal setting:  a curtain-like tablecloth, the Pavilion and the high-heeled shoe are placed in an enclosed, indoor-like space reminiscent of a black box theatre. Blue and white, which are commonly used in Chinese porcelain are predominantly used used throughout the composition which accentuate the sense of void and distant feeling. Everything seems to exist in reality, yet at the same time only in our imagination.

The artist used the most traditional xuan paper, ink and brushes to create a distinctly modern image. Through certain compositional changes, , the artist stayed true to the established realistic Chinese style  while also integrating it withWestern Formalism. As a result, the the overall work embraces the traditional aesthetic features that have an effect on the emotions of the viewer  alongside other recognized elements while modernizing the Chinese literati painting. In a creative world where reality can be depicted as fantasy and vice versa, the literati is transformed into a surreal world by the artist. As such the present work attests thatour world is an eternal maze.