The Ghost of the Living Dead, 2015

Funing Xia  

Xia Fu-Ning is a Chinese artist born in 1962 who lives and works in Songzhuang, Beijing in China. He taught as Professor in the Department of Fine Arts during 1980s in Tianjin Polytechnic University. Zhuangzi et Laozi’s philosophy has exercised a great influence on Xia’s artworks. In his oriental vision, Xia realized that Qi is the character inspiring the original reality, the breath of life, the major component of life that has a great significance in his paintings. Chinese people adopt the phrase Qi-Xi signifying breath, xi means the process of breathing to perceive the intrinsic aspect of art in a more vivid and essential manner, displaying the origin and status of object existence. In his works, the artist arranges the daily intimate surroundings in Qi-Xi, breathing by means of his unique visual logic, surpasses the transient and restricted nature, retrieves the poetic and spiritual feature of their existence origin, thus attaining freedom and eternity.