Weekend Long Read: ‘Unseen Paintings’ Exhibition Reimagines Chinese Landscapes

At the Red Brick Art Museum in Beijing, the new exhibition Bingyi: Unseen Paintings is not an easy show to get into.

The exhibition is more than a solo retrospective of the artist Bingyi. It points to a shift in how East and West exchange ideas about art. For decades, Western art history set the terms, favoring defined, formed images, an aesthetic known as Qian, the yang principle. Chinese landscape painting, or “shanshui,” stood for Kun, the yin force of creation, rooted in inner contemplation rather than geometric observation.