Artist's exhibition offers new take on Western masterpieces

If visitors at oil painter Xie Nanxing's latest show Spices in Beijing are confused by the event's title, they are in the right place. This is because Xie's solo show at Beijing's Ullens Center for Contemporary Art through May 27 is, in his words, a kind of "personal travel diary" of visits to art museums in Europe.

All the paintings on show are titled with a number after the word "spice", reflecting the artist's willful "misreading" of Western art, just like the exhibition's name Spices, which refers to explorer Christopher Columbus who mistook the Americas for the Indies, and a kind of Caribbean tree bark for a new spice from the East.

"Misreading is a kind of creation. There's no need to be correct about anything in the art world," says Xie, 48.