The works Qiu Xiaofei first became well known with involve recollection of personal childhood experience and the visual memories of socialist education. These visual images evoke a warm, nostalgic mentality, but also imply the artist’s judgement of humanities in that era. When “memory” of the past became a popular label of today, it forced Qiu to interrogate the motivating force behind his own painting. Starting from 2012’s Mountain Behind Wood Behind Mountain, three-dimensional objects began to appear in Qiu Xiaofei’s paintings. In the same year, at his Minsheng Art Museum solo exhibition Repetition, the artist used a stream of consciousness brimming with serendipity to construct a brand new relationship between picture and object.

In the 2013 Beijing Commune solo exhibition Rauschenberg Said, “the Walking Stick is Longer than the Maulstick, after All”, Qiu Xiaofei made numerous references to Rauschenberg’s creative work, juxtaposing the canvas against material objects such as soap, strips of wood, the feet of a pair of sculptures, and a walking stick. In this Untitled work, knit socks with vestiges of past memories are worn on a sculpture of a foot painted with copper. Objects, patterns, and colors play a mutually extended and intrusive role. As Qiu Xiaofei said, “If a painting is an object coated in color, then any other colored objects can also be called paintings.”

(Edited by Lijie Wang & Miao Zijin)