Blue Raincoats

Qin Qi is one of the outstanding figures from the new generation of Chinese painting. In 2010, the large-scale solo exhibition Chairs Can Save Lives that he held at the Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum received raving reviews. Blue Raincoats (Lot 166) is one of the participating works from that exhibition. Qin Qi's painting style is diverse. By repeatedly employing the same subject matter and imageries, he demonstrates the many possibilities of painting vocabularies. The dark palette in this painting conjures up the gloomy atmosphere of an ongoing thunderstorm. The conjoined raincoat introduces ambiguity in the relationship as well as the direction of the two riders. Leaving such room for interpretation gives viewers the opportunity to freely associate ideas according to the context of the exhibition. Qin Qi's robust painting skills is combined with absurd imageries. This pioneering work is an amalgamation of reality, imagination, and fictional elements that is built on the frameworks of art history and contemporary art.