Notes From Xi'an 西安随感

[Updated Nov. 18th 2010 for The Xianease Magazine] This is just a brief note about a Xi’an based artist that this time last year my girlfriend and I were fortunate to come across. After enjoying a hearty hot pot dinner one December night, we strolled up towards the new Art Gallery on Dà Táng Bú Yè Chéng (大唐不夜城), the street directly south of Da Yan Ta (Big Goose Pagoda). By the time we got there it was after 9 and the place was quite quiet, most of the small galleries had already closed and so we decided to have a look around the excellent bookstore.

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. I responded by showing interest in this new art venue, an interest that led them to excitedly introduce us to their companion, the local Artist Xú Bù (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 the artist himself guided us up the stairs that the security guards kindly extended their shift and allowed some extra time for us to look around. It was much appreciated, as it was a pleasure to be introduced to his work.

This was not simply because the artist was giving us a guided tour or that I actually liked it, but because Xú Bù 徐步 himself actually seemed to represent the essence of these paintings and maybe even traditional Chinese art and culture generally. This was not just through his vital, uplifting words but also through the simple manner in which he moved and communicated those words. There was humility within his utterances and a controlled, 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 simply apparent 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, separating stares across the gallery. His work contained this elemental freedom that must only come from so much time lost in the natural world.

Though, he did note that he always returns 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 recognized in what can seem a somewhat restrictive art form. Xú Bù 徐步 himself even noted a requirement to quite literally copy, time and again, the great masters, before it is possible to discover one’s own style and self-expression. To my untrained eye, he had 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, near to where he lived. As we were about to bid farewell he requested we wait a moment by the gate while he popped home to take something. 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 family. A good man!

This was a large exhibition, with some huge 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. I make no judgment about that in terms of practicality and value just simply note that it does seem a bit sad.

But, whatever the wider situation, it was good to have seen his work, as it was recently also good to have seen an exhibition at the same place that cataloged the work of 20 of China’s best ‘real life’ photographers. This gallery on Dà Táng Bú Yè Chéng (大唐不夜城) is may be worth checking out a bit more often than I have been doing.