Qiu Shihua - Galerie Karsten Greve Köln, 30. Januar - 11. April 2026

With its fifth solo exhibition at the Cologne gallery, Galerie Karsten Greve pays tribute to Qiu Shihua (1940–2025), presenting a curated selection of important works on canvas and paper, many of them shown publicly for the first time. The works originate from a group entrusted to the gallery by the artist during his lifetime. The exhibition honors an exceptional oeuvre in which, over several decades, Qiu Shihua developed a singular position between the millennia-old tradition of Chinese landscape painting and a radically reduced pictorial language. His works articulate an artistic stance in which perception, time, and philosophy are inseparably intertwined. At first glance, Qiu Shihua’s paintings appear almost empty: luminous, restrained pictorial fields in which color and form seem to dissolve. Yet through sustained, concentrated, indeed contemplative and meditative, viewing, they gradually begin to reveal themselves in subtle nuances. Mountains, forests, and lakes cautiously emerge from the finest layers of color, always fragile and fleeting, only to withdraw again in the next moment. Seeing becomes a time-bound process that resists acceleration, whose outcome remains inherently ephemeral. His painting does not unfold at a single glance, but rather as a gentle coming-into-being and fading-away, demanding attention and devotion. Video: Studio Tino Kukulies, Düsseldorf #art #gallery #galeriekarstengreve #cologne #contemporaryart #chineseart #landscapepainting #daoism #arthistory #culture