Terence Rodrigues , Art Historic and Critic, London, 2003, Yin Xin : Nostalgia - After the Masters

More than most artists, Yin Xin seems to be on a resolute journey of self-discovery and a deliberate quest for self-identification, with clear turning-points in his career - though the road seems more labyrinthine than linear.

Having been constrained for years in the stifling straitjacket of socialist realism during what is paradoxically called the 'cultural revolution' in China, Yin Xin doubtless felt a sense of exultant liberation when he emerged into the unfettered air of the West. However, his work shows an attempt not to expunge his past but to narrate, comprehend, validate and intertwine it with his present.

If we look at Yin Xin's work since the mid-1990s, we see that he moved from a nostalgic depiction of decadent Manchu China (a world which he had never known, but whose carefree elegance he probably hankered after) in the Opium Series, to an evocation of the tough, propagandist Maoist period (which he had known personally) in his Cultural Revolution Paintings. The works in this exhibition seem to represent another staging post in his journey.

At first glance, we think these paintings are copies of the iconic western masterpieces with which we are all so familiar, but we quickly realize something is different.

In the 18th century, we 'Europeanized' Chinese art (hence the term 'chinoiserie'). Yin Xin has done exactly the opposite and 'chinesified' western figurative paintings. What makes the spectator even more d¨¦pays¨¦ is that not only are the faces and costumes chinesified, but also the details and background: thus the Mona Lisa sits not in front of the undulating hills and rivers of Umbria, but the misty mountains of coastal China; a lady in a Vermeer interior does not have an oil painting on the wall but a hanging scroll; the characters in Manet's D¨¦jeuner sur l'herbe do nothave a wicker picnic basket but a lacquer food-carrier.

Moreover, Yin Xin's works have a rugose, ridged surface texture, very different from the smooth surface of old master paintings. In addition, the black chalk lines of the under-drawing are left visible, so the paintings look more like oil sketches or studies.

Despite the chinesifications, Yin Xin's works could never be mistaken for Chinese prototypes: relism, perspective and three dimensionality are European concerns. The use of oil as a medium is itself a relatively recent innovation from the West. Moreover, because of a Confucian sense of propriety, the Chinese never depicted the nude. The nudes in Yin Xin's interpretations of Titian, Rubens, Ingres and Manet have no correlative in classical Chinese art.

These works show a traditional Chinese respect for history and radition, but what makes them contemporary is the blend of playful and serious, of reverence and irreverence - particularly as the great icons of western art seem so sacrosanct and inviolable. They are no doubt symbols of the ambivalent nature of Yin Xin's own life - an endeavour to integrate and honour past and present, Chinese and European.