Xue Jiye is not a contemporary artist in the temporal sense. Set in ambiguous realms of the past, present and future, his works have a distinctly ‘Nietzschean’ aim: to interrogate the human condition. This latest solo exhibition of oil paintings and sculpture showcases his unique artistic vision with a host of new creatures, ironic scenarios and fantasy worlds.

With an international career spanning over two decades, Xue Jiye is a seminal figure in Chinese contemporary art. Famous for representing man’s ironic struggle against his own kind, an array of new archetypes debut their appearance in his new works. Creatures with tails, razor-sharp teeth and androgynous features devour innocent nymphs and angelic humans. Seen in series, his paintings function like a Darwinian narrative of human descent and rise of a new order. Indeed, with global warming, terrorism and economic disaster in our midst, what awaits us but a similarly apocalyptic end?

For all their science-fictive character, Xue Jiye’s works allude to his profound knowledge of old European master paintings and sculpture. The combined effect is somewhat ironic. In Europe, art was traditionally used to consecrate beauty and virtue, whereas Xue Jiye uses his art to challenge that function and re-evaluate conventional notions of aesthetic ideals. In one painting, the artist alludes to Peter Paul Ruben’s ‘Leda with Swan;’ in which the swan has been usurped by one of Xue Jiye’s disturbing creations. In a giant, Rodin-esque sculpture, two men fight each other to the point that they are ironically destroying the sculpture itself.

Rather than turning in their graves, it is likely that European masters would applaud Xue Jiye. His works demonstrate that from whatever epoch and culture, art is global in scope and timeless in relevance. His visual worlds might be imagined, but with their philosophical messages and sardonic humor, there is something about them that is ominously human, all too human.