Three people gather around a flame. One leans forward, the other two are still. The field on which they sit is split neatly in half, revealing tree roots reaching down into the endless earth. A flock of sheep graze and sleep under a midnight sky, unaware – or benevolently accepting – of the strange scene unfolding before them.
Comprising all new paintings by Beijing-based author, filmmaker, and painter Xi Jiu, “A Tiger in the Clover Garden” is inspired by the magical realist stories within “Bestiary,” a short story collection by Argentinian author Julio Cortázar. First published in 1951, the stories are of a haunted Latin America, filled with chimera and creatures borne from a fractured social landscape. Struck by the parallels between Cortázar's fiction and China's own long standing surrealist traditions, Xi Jiu developed a collection of scenes as an homage to both.