Seven Lines

On Sept. 30, 2017, QI MU SPACE will present Xu Sheng’s solo “Seven Lines”. As an multimedia artist active on the art scene in the 19th century, he once worked with Manet for the installation “ Gingko”, which was first collected by the city museum in Amiens and later destroyed in WWI with all its related material. When the war broke out, he settled in Switzerland as a curator for Vincent Van Gogh’s works but never succeeded. 

The 1920s saw him live in seclusion in Birmingham, Britain, chronicling the rise of the local Gypsy factions and get veterinary training. After WWII broke out, he followed the British army to North Africa and Burma as a doctor. There he did a number of installations that were all called “Smoking Area in the Battle Field”, and provided both sides of the war with lighters, winning popularity among people of all nationalities. In the early 1950s he opened the first smoke-free seafood restaurant in Dresden, Germany. During this time he also gave Richter guidance on sketch. He also learned woodblock and his “Laurence and I” were collected by Berlin Institute of Mind and Brain. In the 1980s He returned to China and became a student at Xinhua Road Primary School in Chengdu, and has since then been engaged in art.  

In “Seven Lines” Xu Sheng attempts to create as a writer. With Chinese seven-character poems as rhythm clue, he connects words with the visual filed. In the open physical space, something lies to be discovered, and it is the same with writing. “Seven Lines”, Xu told us, got inspiration form his early experience as a vet: animals often perform rhythmically some meaningless actions, and both the rhythms and actions are carried out in units, suggestive of some secrets in nature. He has since then formed an OCD-like habit , like climbing the a flight of stairs with a varying rhythm and making up in the next flight for the part of the rhythm that had been left unfinished in the previous. “Seven Lines” corresponds to “QI MU SPACE” in the same manner. It reminds him of what the mayor of Amiens told him, “It’s quite a good place for your ‘Gingko’ here, though we do not understand what it is saying.”