Qiu Jie's magical realism at Art Plural Singapore

Chinese artist Qiu Jie's exhibition at Art Plural gallery in Singapore this autumn showcased his distinctive magical realism, blending autobiography, erotic imagery, Cultural Revolution propaganda, and photographs of his native Shanghai. His works, primarily pencil drawings assembled into large compositions, reflect a rudimentary technique born from his student days at Geneva's École des Beaux-Arts, where limited resources forced simplicity. Qiu Jie describes his compositional process as a theatrical play staging unlikely encounters, with some works taking up to a year to complete. In 'BB and Mao' (2012), a tabby cat representing Mao sits alongside Brigitte Bardot, while other pieces juxtapose revolutionary icons with consumerist symbols like hamburgers held by Red Guards. The artist's personal history is central: 'Enfance' (2010), a series of five drawings, uses childhood photographs from the Cultural Revolution when he lived with grandparents, separated from his parents. Qiu Jie often appears as a 'participant observer' in his works, which interrogate China's transformation through temporal and semiological telescoping. His Shanghai street scenes depict a city caught between nostalgia and rapid modernization, with perfect female nudes echoing early 20th-century advertising posters. The exhibition revealed an iconography spanning multiple registers, producing a portrait of a changing world viewed with humor and humanism.