Oil works on show rendered with classical xieyi spirit

For the past two decades, Wen Zhenfei has been mounting and curating exhibitions for his peers from across the country as the artistic director of the Guan Shanyue Art Museum in Shenzhen, Guangdong province. At the same time, he is also one of those fervent artists who love creating oil paintings with a distinctive style, in which he integrates the long-standing and highly expressive xieyi (literally meaning "writing the spirit") of classical Chinese painting with Western oil painting techniques.

Now Wen is showing his works on canvas in a solo exhibition, Outside the Frame, at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing. The "landscapes" depicted under Wen's brushes are not entirely sketches of nature, but also the reflections of his changing mentality over the years, delivering a poetic sense and philosophical depth to his outputs.

The exhibition runs until Dec 19.