Qiu Yi's 'Gentle Revolution' at MA-EC Gallery in Milan

MA-EC Gallery, the first Italian gallery run by a Chinese entrepreneur, Peishuo Yang, presents 'La Rivoluzione Gentile' by Qiu Yi (b. 1982), a Chinese artist based in Italy for over a decade. The exhibition features installations, sculptures, and paintings exploring the dialogue between Eastern aesthetics and Western art traditions. Qiu Yi, born in Yantai, Shandong province—Confucius's birthplace—studied sculpture there before moving to Florence in 2011 to earn a degree in Visual Arts and New Expressive Languages at the Accademia di Belle Arti. In 2016, he founded the China and Italy Contemporary Art and Culture Association, serving as president. The series 'Mille parole' decontextualizes Chinese ideograms, using ink on rice paper to strip them of verbal meaning, echoing post-war European and American gestural abstraction by artists like Pierre Soulages, Franz Kline, and Emilio Vedova. In 'Profezia,' Qiu Yi reinterprets Michelangelo's sculptures (Tondo Pitti, Dying Slave) in a soft, organic material requiring daily water to prevent decay, reflecting on cultural heritage's fragility. The floor installation 'Ao Tu' comprises over 500 casts of ancient ink-dissolving trays, embodying Taoist principles of yin-yang and gentle opposition. Qiu Yi's 'gentle revolution' advocates for change through softness and listening, contrasting with louder voices like Ai Weiwei and Badiucao, and aligning with Wolfgang Laib's aesthetic harmony.