Paradise lost and found

China's rapid economic development also has an unsettling side, according to painter Yu Qiping. His paintings depict a poetic dreamland disturbed by modern culture. He merges a Utopian images, personal memories and metaphysics in his subtle brush strokes.

For instance, a 2007 painting entitled No Word shows a muttering monk walking under the dark clouds; the background is two parallel red walls extending to the horizon, which he says display his loneliness and sorrow.

People can feel in Yu's artistic language the twists and turns of the "cultural revolution" (1966-76) and the reform and opening-up in the 1980s; the influence of "consumptionism" in the 1990s; and his experience living abroad in Japan.