Silent Plains

Considered a leading figure in Chinese realist oil painting, Ai Xuan only began to explore working in the ink and brush medium in 2008. Although Ai learned traditional painting while he was a student at the Central Academy of Art in Beijing, it was in 1987 in New York that he became inspired by the magnificence of classical Chinese paintings exhibited in the city’s public collections. In Silent Plains, the meticulously-detailed face of the protagonist radiates a sense of lonesome and fragile beauty against an expansive Tibetan landscape. The expressive quality of ink and brush lends to Ai’s ink painting a sense of freedom and openness not often seen in his oil works, leaving much room for the viewer to wonder and contemplate.