East Meets Eden

You can’t reach paradise without braving the unknown. All the world’s sweetest spots, the ones where man has only to enjoy the sunshine and wait for ripe fruit to fall, lie far past the view from a continent’s shores. Who knows what those Stone Age argonauts lacked that drove their hollowed-out logs to Tahiti, but it wasn’t courage.

Polynesia is a paradise no longer, the vital component of mystery long gone, its reality the world’s dream vacation. The same holds for the Caribbean. At the far reaches of the Indian Ocean, however, the Seychelles are remote enough from the collective grasp to draw blank looks when mentioned. Aside from the Seychelles’ inhabitants, only the French, who will cheerfully walk a thousand leagues over broken glass to get away from it all, are generally familiar with these wondrous isles.

Artist Du Jie knows of the mysterious void between what the eyes see and the heart feels, and the courage required to venture after a transpersonal vision of paradise. His sojourn in the Seychelles resulted in the following paintings. An almost surreal palette reveals the Seychelles’ power to enchant, and our wish to be enchanted. A distinctly Chinese sensibility permeates the compositions; minute human figures are all but lost in the landscapes, acknowledgment of our insignificant yet ideally harmonious relationship to the cosmos. Good painting is often called a shortcut to the truth, in this case, that of the Seychelles’ tourist slogan, “Another World”.

Du Jie’s series, “Seychelles in My Eyes”, is currently on display at Creation Art Gallery on East Ritan Road next to the park. Tel:8610 8561 7570, E-mail: creationgallery@sohu.com.

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