Ma Sibo’s canvases show us fragments of intimate landscapes, like windows into the soul.

Plays of light and haziness, obtained by an astonishing manipulation of his materials in gradation, create a troublingly strange effect that blankets the banal scenes and spaces, such as merry-go-rounds in a theme park or clothing abandoned in the half-light of a bedroom. In these places, purged of all human presence, sensations are elicited by things and colors. Indeed, Ma Sibo’s brushes envelope inert objects with an emotional aura, awakening distant memories and a vague nostalgia.

Ma Sibo often wanders through Beijing, where he lives and works, taking photographs of hidden corners amongst the buildings, sheltered from the frenetic energy of the city. These photographs serve as inspirations and models for his painstakingly worked oil paintings. As they are gradually faded, stratified and retouched by the paint, these landscapes take on the dreamlike atmosphere of the unreal.

A strange mixture of reality and imagination, Ma Sibo’s luminous visions recall Baudelaire’s Windows: closed to the outside world but lit from within by a dazzling and vivid candle, revealing the poetry of our dreams.

(Silvia Mattei, extract)

Image: © Ma Sibo, Galerie Paris-Beijing