Jia Aili, One of the Most Talented Chinese Artists of His Generation and His Pictorial Universe

Four large works - including three never seen before - are at the centre of the personal exhibition of Jia Aili at TANK Shanghai, the non-profit space provided for by the great Chinese collector Qiao Zhibing. Faithful to the poetics of Jia Aili, the works on display join the anxieties of the human soul, the uniqueness of individual emotions locked inside each of us and disclosed with the majesty of collective history and its continuous, inexorable flow. Microscopic and macroscopic dimensions meld together, giving life to scenes in which endless and desolate wastelands are a metaphor for human solitude, of the tininess of man in front of the grandeur of nature, of the infinite mysteries of the cosmos but also of the great narratives that mould - and often overwhelm - individual existence. The size of the canvases, such as that of Harsh, the work that lends its name to the exhibition and which is the largest work created by Jia Aili to date, is proof of the enormous ability of the artist to create compositions full of pathos and intimacy, balanced by a sense that the human presence almost seems to retreat, surrendering before the power of the universe. Mysterious creatures suspended in a dimension which is “other”, slipping out of Jia’s canvases and revealing the complexity of a total artist whose brushstrokes inspire.