Oil on canvas

168 x 220 cm. 66 1/8 x 86 5/8 in.

Signed in Pinyin and dated on upper right;
Signed in Chinese and dated on the reverse
EXHIBITED
8 Nov – 30 Dec 2014, Qin Qi Solo Exhibition, Platform China Contemporary Art Institute, Beijing

PROVENANCE
Platform China Contemporary Art Institute, Beijing
Important Private Collection, Asia

The Unexpected in Life Evokes Wonders on Stage
Qin Qi – A Representative of Post-70s Artists

Among the post-70s contemporary artists in China, Qin Qi is an innovative pioneer in theoretical thinking. In 1999, he was admitted to the oil painting department of Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts. After his postgraduate studies, with excellent performance, he became a professor at the academy. While doing research, he continued to explore multiple themes and enlarge his vocabulary of vibrant images. His style directly inherits from the plastic tradition of Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts, but further develops into a highly dynamic, avant-garde expression.

Breaking the Routine: Vigor of Qin's Narrative Structure

The painting presented this time, White Goose, was created in 2014. It is one of the most expressive and spiritual masterpieces among Qin Qi's still lifes. Instead of using rich colors as the artist commonly does, Qin constructs the main body of White Goose with a single color. The sheet, the quilt, the pillow, and the lying white goose are all presented in pure white, which constitute a sizeable homogeneous area and create remarkable visual tension. While expressive, the painting retains narrative features thanks to the artists› refined figurative technique. The twisted baroque flame pattern endows the bed with marble-like sculptural texture, bringing out a high visual dynamic that recalls the table-cloth by Paul Cézanne. The painting›s composition is in line with the artist›s earlier still life experiments. The beautiful white goose lays down in the bed with its neck twisted. At first glance, it looks like a sweet sleeping angel, but the dark-gray background speaks of the coldness of the environment and exudes a sense of alienation. Qin seems to dismiss the apparent meaning of the image with a playful attitude. The painting is situated in the conflict between emotion and purpose and introduces the viewer into a world of painting beyond the daily experience.

Misplaced White Goose: Allegorical Exploration

As the most representative creative element of Qin Qi, the motif of white goose went through transformation “from outside to inside”: in the beginning, the goose was simply regarded as an element of the still life; while in White Goose, it assumes a weird posture on a bed – a symbol of privacy. The illogical appearance of the goose is an anthropomorphic trick intended by the artist. In Greek mythology, the swan was regarded as the incarnation of the king of gods, Zeus, who tried to hide from the persecuting hawks. He found refuge in Princess Leda's arms and fell in love with the young maiden who later bore his offspring. Leonardo Da Vinci, Salvador Dalí, and many other Western masters have contributed their interpretations of this story. Qin Qi, obviously inspired by the myth, brought the white goose into a private field for the first time. Here, the pale animal becomes the symbol of masculinity. The deliberately elongated neck hints male sex, and the fact that there is only one single goose strengthens such implication of sexual desire. However, the masculine tyranny is weakened by the goose's half-closed eyelids: the white goose seems obedient and fragile, beautiful yet solitary, which implicitly points out the postmodern mental state of isolation and inner conflict. What the artist depicts here is, in fact, the alienation between personal life and the outside world that slowly erodes emotion.

Price estimate:
HKD: 450,000 – 650,000
USD: 58,100 – 83,900

Auction Result:
HKD: 802,400