Vernissage on the occasion of the event weekend ArtCarouge taking place on Saturday 4 and on Sunday 5 November 2023. Please join us for the opening days from 11 am to 5 pm. The artist will be “present” online from China on Saturday and Sunday from 3 to 5 pm.
Le Salon Vert is pleased to present a second solo exhibition by artist Qiu Jie, who was born in China in 1961 and has lived in Geneva since 1989.
During Covid, Qiu Jie was unable to make his annual trip back to China. Instead, he took the opportunity to travel more extensively in Europe – in Italy, Spain, and Switzerland. Entitled “Elsewhere”, the series shows seascapes and alpine landscapes captured in the notebooks he always carries with him. The title also refers to the artist's impression of always being elsewhere, whether he is in China, in Switzerland, or travelling.
Strongly imbued with Chinese traditions, Qiu Jie's painting is extremely precise and rich, with vivid and contrasting colours. In a spirit of gentle provocation, he skilfully and playfully blends striking and sometimes prosaic elements of Western art and daily life into this classical harmony: a Botticelli Venus, standing lighthouse-like on the Mediterranean while bathers stroll along Italy’s coastal path, or a beautiful, swimsuit-clad Chinese woman, framed by quintessentially Swiss advertising elements like a watch, a Swiss Army knife, the Matterhorn, and a “Swiss made” slogan emblazoned across the middle of the painting – an ironic way for the artist to juxtapose the worlds in which he lives.
