This is just a brief note about a Xi’an based artist that my 
girlfriend and I were fortunate to come across this week. After enjoying a hearty dinner last Sunday, Ling and I strolled up towards the new Art Museum on Da4 Tang2 Bu2 Ye4 Cheng2 (大唐不夜城 ), the new street south of Da Yanta. It was already after 9 and the place was quite quiet, most of the little galleries had already closed and so we decided to have a look around the excellent bookshop, after which I took out my camera to shoot a couple of pictures before we left. While I was doing so, a couple of gentleman spotted a Laowai and decided to engage him in conversation. That laowai, being me, responded by showing interest in this new art venue, an interest that led them to excitedly introduce me to their companion, the Artist Xu2 Bu4 (徐步), who was exhibiting his work in the huge gallery upstairs.
This was, we discovered, to be the last day and the last night of his show and we were to end up being the last guests. It was only because we were being guided up the stairs by the Artist himself that the security guards extended their shift and allowed some extra time for us to look around. It was much appreciated, as it was a pleasure to look around this work, not simply because the artist was giving us a guided tour or that I actually liked his work. It was because 徐步 himself seemed to represent the essence of these paintings and maybe even traditional Chinese art and culture more generally; not just through his vital, uplifting words, but through the simple manner in which he moved and communicated those words, there was a certain humility within them and a meditative grace in his movement.
He spoke of rising canyon mists, hazy pine forests on China’s mountain slopes, of river fogs and wooded winter chills but the mountain forests and the distant peaks were also apparent just in his being. They were in the calm movements as he turned, they were in each weighted glance he took from person to painting, they were in the soft sound beneath his words and they were in his distant gaze across the gallery. There was also a natural, elemental freedom in his work that came from so much time spent lost in the natural world, though he noted, he always returned home to actually paint. From my perspective, the swirling mountain winds had found a way through him onto the canvas. This is a freedom that cannot always be recognised in what can seem a somewhat restrictive art form. Xu Bu himself noted a requirement to quite literally copy, time and again, the great masters, before it is possible to discover ones own self expression. To my untrained eye, he has certainly discovered his.
We ended up on this chilly, late December evening wandering back with him to the simple surrounds of Shi Da’s campus, where he lives. Before we bade farewell, he invited us to wait a moment by the gate while he popped home to take something for us. He returned promptly with some books of his work; for myself, for my girlfriend and for her younger brother, each of which he signed with a brief note in a flourishing script, before quietly gesturing goodnight and making his way home to his wife. If I ever engage more fully with Chinese Art and Culture it will be for many reasons and experiences, but this evening will always be lingering in the background of my mind, as I take what will be a slow journey deeper into the culture that lies beneath contemporary Chinese society.
[This was a large exhibition, with some large pieces of work, the depth of which, he said, even some of his friends and colleagues were surprised about, but it was previously and will be again, rolled up and put away in 徐步's home. This same story will be repeated all over Xi'an and other such city centres of Art. There is no space for their work to be shown permanently or I suppose no finance to find it. How sad that does seem.]
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Tags: Art China, Chinese Artist
The images are from Kashgar- here they link to the China News Page.
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