Lin Songtao

254238712@qq.com

Paintings by the young painter Mei Qianqian were exhibited at the Chao Museum, at the Sea World Culture and Arts Center. The solo exhibition titled “Mayflies at White Night” ran from Saturday to yesterday.

Born in Toronto, Canada, the 15-year-old painter is now studying at Cushing Academy in the U.S. and regularly travels between her U.S. and Shenzhen homes.

A total of more than 60 artworks are exhibited, which were all completed by Mei during the pandemic. The paintings break the usual understanding of painting by utilizing the classical painting style to present surrealist themes, bringing a unique viewing experience to the public.

The audience showed polarized reviews for Mei’s paintings. Some viewers said “I can’t understand” and some thought they are creepy and dark, while others claimed they love them very much. Liang Junwei, a teacher of Xiao Yanchao, the host of Chao Museum, analyzed the reason for the disagreement and explained that Mei’s paintings are full of highly personal characteristics and difficult to define.

For instance, the painting titled “Man-Han Banquet(a massive dinner consisting of Manchu and Han foods)” was created by discarded felt and makes references to Schiele’s sketches, and extracts and reorganizes the figures from Michelangelo’s “Genesis” to achieve unexpected artistic effects. “Ballet” integrates structuralist sketching techniques.

“All of her works are like writing her own inner monologue,” Liang said, also saying that Mei’s ability to delve into the most mundane topics and make them fully personal is common to all artists.

For the surrealist subject, “Victoria’s Secret” expresses criticism for appearance anxiety and mass aesthetics.

“Papa Peppa,” also inspired by Michelangelo’s “Genesis,” depicts a dystopian world in which creatures are divided into upper, middle and lower classes by a variety of things. “Happy Planet” describes a world a billion years later, where humans are left in ruins after self-destruction, and the tools created by humans have become the overlords ruling the planet. Liang also points out that the strong spirit of classicism in Mei’s surreal works makes her works unrestrained. The largest work in the exhibition, “Sacrifice,” is an example. Although it is an oil painting with a surreal theme, it uses the traditional Chinese landscape painting technique and took a year to complete.

Like her works, Mei is more mature than her peers. In her opinion, painting is not utilitarian, but just her own affair. “As the theme of the exhibition suggests, each person is as small as a mayfly, and so is a painting, which reflects a unique world seen through one’s own eyes and doesn’t need to be given a grand value,” she said.