The paintings of Chinese artist Shen Xiaotong, who is holding a solo exhibition at Beijing's Sukie Gallery, usually give viewers two opposing impressions.

At first glance, one is taken aback by the striking, unrelenting red, green, or blue hues dominating his canvases, especially his large-scale works. Upon closer examination, the intensity of his work abates — replaced by the pared-down, minimal portrayal of apples, houseplants, bamboo, landscapes and his childhood friends — subjects that characterize the artist's recent oeuvre.

The subjects in Shen's paintings, created with loose, expressive brushstrokes, seem to merge with or emerge from their heavy background. Fuzzy and mysterious, they seem to have been salvaged from a recess of memories, imbuing the canvases with tranquility, nostalgia, and a touch of melancholy.

"Though they are mundane things in my life, I, now at 56 years old, hold them dear to my heart," the artist said.

Born in 1968 in Chengdu, Southwest China's Sichuan province, Shen studied printmaking at the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute. He graduated in 1989 and participated in the China/Avant-garde Exhibition at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing. Widely regarded as a seminal event that pushed the '85 New Wave Movement to its peak, the exhibition displayed some of the most important works by China's first generation of contemporary artists.

Shen is often described as one of the neo-expressionist artists influenced by senior artists hailing from Southwest China, such as Zhang Xiao Gang and Zhou Chunya. In his early career, he was best known for his works Three Tea Drinkers, The Lost Sky, Home – The Forgotten Memory, and The Red Series, all created in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The last three decades have seen the Chinese contemporary art market thrive. Many of Shen's contemporaneous artists rise to international fame, thanks largely to the "political pop" or "cynical realism" movements. However, Shen has maintained a standoffish or even detached attitude towards the art world. In 1998, he moved to the US, where he lived until 2008.

"Throughout my career, I've always stuck to only painting what touches my heart and what I have experienced. I've never made anything for the sake of being en vogue," Shen said in an interview in 2023 while holding a solo exhibition at the Long Museum in Chongqing.

"Shen Xiaotong's artistic career has traversed the 40-year evolution of China's contemporary art scene," said Xing Yu, curator of the artist's Beijing solo.

Quoting the Freudian theory of psychoanalysis, Xing highlighted that the artist's latest creation had departed from his early conceptual paintings rooted in the id, to the literati-style painting driven by the super-ego.

Shen's Beijing solo, titled Ink and Wash on Paper & Oil on Canvas – Shen Xiaotong's Painting Chapter 1, brings together 29 oils and ink paintings from the artist's recent practice.

"Shen's work strongly resonates with me because it speaks of the scholar's spirit in ancient China's wenrenhua (literati painting)," said Chen Suting, founder of Sukie Gallery.

Wenrenhua got its name because it was widely practiced by highly educated people – intellectuals and scholar-bureaucrats in ancient China. Devised by Wang Wei, a prominent poet and artist of the eighth century, and further developed by Su Dongpo, the lauded scholar of the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127), the style values self-expression over literal representation.

Chen cited (Plants). 2017 No.6, her favorite painting of the artist as an example.

It's a medium-sized painting of two nondescript houseplants against a vibrant red background, far larger than the subjects.

"My heart feels nourished whenever I look at it, and I can look at it quietly for a long while. It feels like there's a therapeutic power to it, like many of his paintings," she said.

"This work is difficult to handle from a painterly perspective as Shen Xiaotong subtly approached the strong contrast of red and green colors, instilling the ordinary subject with the quality of a literati painting, which is quite rare in contemporary Chinese art," Chen commented.

The contemporary artist's ink and wash paintings speak louder about his return to the millennium-old literati painting tradition.

Much smaller compared with his oil paintings, Shen's ink-and-wash paintings depict bamboo groves and landscapes. Featuring a smattering of brush strokes against a light black background, they are immediately evocative of the xieyi (literally "drawing spirit") style in traditional Chinese paintings.

"While in America, even though I had a 3,000 square-meter studio, I couldn't paint a single painting. In retrospect, I realized that's because of cultural differences," he said.

"I want to explore our Eastern aesthetics and create something new using the contemporary art language."

Shen Xiaotong's solo exhibition runs through Dec 24.

For more details:

10:30-17:30, Tuesday to Sunday, B1-01, Building 4, Beijing Fun, Langfang Toutiao 21, Xicheng district, Beijing