Ink impressions

The exhibition highlights the recurring motifs and ideas that Xu presents in his works, in a metaphoric way. At the center is Thousands of Mountains in a Midnight Dream, a work to demonstrate Xu's sought-after unified harmony through the juxtaposition of different things seemingly related.

Marked with a signature tone of blue in Xu's work, the painting depicts a robust horse standing on a mountain path among clouds and mist. And it goes with a replica of a couplet written in the calligraphic style by Kang Youwei, a reformer and scholar who lived in the late Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), that reads, "as vigorous as a well-bred horse, as extraordinary as an outstanding man".

In this work, Xu uses the gongbi brushwork to depict the horse and the figurative technique of Western oil painting to draw mountains, staging a poetic, dreamlike scene.

The moon-themed paintings that Xu is known for are also on show. He details vividly the lunar craters while he places the satellite in an unrealistic setting, for example, half-sunken in sea as it is depicted in the shown painting Moon Rising From the Sea. The idea is drawn from a famous eighth-century Chinese poem.

Xu explains that when people in the past gazed at the moon, they often thought about Chang'e, the moon goddess in Chinese mythology, and her pet rabbit, while now people view the planet more from a scientific viewpoint.

"The imaginations arising from ancient mythology may be given away to observations of the craters. Still, the moon interests me. It is an eternal theme for me to look for renewed representations," he says.

Sun Dongdong, the exhibition curator, says that in Xu's paintings, the moon is not only a symbol with metaphoric meaning in Chinese culture, but also something seen by people around the world, therefore, a universal symbol of exchanges.