Between 1953 and 1955, Charles Lapicque spent several periods in Venice, an Italian city that fascinated him and which he explored tirelessly. Crépuscule sur le Lido [Twilight on the Lido] is part of a series of nocturnal landscapes. In a space flooded with electric lights, a boat crosses the water, leaving the last colours of the sunset to shimmer. The street lamps direct their rays towards the viewer in the form of violet stars. This moving vision displays a chromatic exuberance typical of an artist who was passionate about the laws of optics.

Qiu Xiaofei’s works employ vivid, lavish colors intertwined with the surreal, metaphor-rich imagery of magical realism, reconstructing a mysterious world where painting and humanity converge. Themes such as history, guardianship, birth, and death interweave, ultimately forming an enigmatic landscape. Qiu’s inspiration extends from personal family memories to his nostalgia for childhood days spent in his hometown, Harbin. Dilapidated churches fused with utilitarian “Worker’s Homes” morph into futuristic architectures, while peculiar scenes emerging from dense forests become vessels for these memories and fantasies. In these paintings, the father, children, cats, birth, growth, aging, death, history, the present, and the future dissolve into a cyclical, boundary-blurring unity.