Shiliuyun-Xinjiang Daily (Reporter Jiang Dawei) news: Recently, a post-90s generation painter Erpan Alimjan held his personal exhibition--Language of Flowers, at Gaotai Gallery in the Cultural Innovation Park on Hetan Road of Urumqi City in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, and exhibited his 34 works since 2019.

Walking into Erpan’s exhibition, his works are so visually striking that the traditional decoration of Atlas silk is like a flying butterfly, giving one a free and detached aesthetic feeling. In particular, the repeated and skillful use of patterns on the Atlas silk breaks the boundaries between realism and abstraction, which not only makes his paintings vivid and gorgeous but also highlights the unique beauty of traditional fabric.

Photo shows Erpan Alimjan’s work from his personal exhibition held at Gaotai Gallery in the Cultural Innovation Park on Hetan Road of Urumqi City in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. (Photo by Shiliuyun-Xinjiang Daily/Jiang Dawei)

“Erpan has integrated traditional Atlas silk and its patterns into his works. He has explored the unique visual beauty of Xinjiang decorative arts and created works rich in a regional and modern sense based on his own aesthetic understanding. That is the reason why Gaotai Gallery, for the first time, held a personal exhibition for post-90s artists,” Ma Xing, director of Gaotai Gallery, said.

Born in Ili Kazak Autonomous Prefecture in 1993, Erpan works in Beijing after getting his undergraduate and master's degree in the Oil Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts. He is a new generation artist who have attracted considerable attention. Most of his early works were about his hometown, family and childhood. He used his brush to draw out the colorful memories of his childhood and precious ties with his family.

Photo shows Erpan Alimjan at his personal exhibition at Gaotai Gallery in the Cultural Innovation Park on Hetan Road of Urumqi City in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. (Photo by Shiliuyun-Xinjiang Daily/Jiang Dawei)

For example, Erpan skillfully used the candy paper sent by his mother from Xinjiang as painting materials, as well as the Xinjiang milk tea powder, the chandelier at his father's workplace to collage the background of the paintings, so that colors could be interwoven on the canvas. These pieces, like the key of time, opened the garden of his memories, conveying love from his family and expressing his yearning for home and a sense of belonging in Beijing.

However, Erpan's works were not only about the past. From the sophomore year of university, he enriched his paintings with flowers and elements from Atlas silk, and began to use the image of flowers frequently. He boldly used the traditional decoration of Atlas silk in order to express the poetry and nostalgia of his hometown.

The patterns on Atlas silk mostly come from daily life and nature, and differ in different areas of Xinjiang. The patterns which combine the images of beads, combs, woodblocks, badam, pomegranates, pears and other graphics reflect the unique beauty of folk art. Whether he stylized the patterns on Atlas in his paintings, or directly used Atlas silk as canvas, he tried to break the boundaries between decoration and painting, so as to display Xinjiang’s traditional culture in a new way and with new vitality.

Erpan believes that there is a unique visual beauty in Xinjiang's traditional decorative art, including the beauty of nature, order, symmetry, and the vision towards the future life, and all of them seems to last forever.

“Erpan is a talented and creative young artist. During his undergraduate years, he studied in the third studio of the Oil Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, where I taught. He had a natural sensitivity to color. After a long time of training, he showed a solid styling ability and started his artistic exploration. He loves Xinjiang traditional arts very much, and his works that combine traditional aesthetics with contemporary art are a tribute to flowers and patterns on Atlas silk and show his pursuit of beauty and adherence to passing on cultural heritage,” Yu Hong, Erpan’s professor in the Oil Painting Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts said about his personal exhibition.

Photo shows Erpan Alimjan’s personal exhibition at Gaotai Gallery in the Cultural Innovation Park on Hetan Road of Urumqi City in northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. (Photo by Shiliuyun-Xinjiang Daily/Jiang Dawei)

"Nowadays, Atlas silk, as an expression of both tradition and fashion, is no longer just a clothing material, but also a cultural heritage, which is no longer confined to Xinjiang but gradually going out to the world with its charm," Erpan said that he would continue to explore new possibilities of Atlas silk in contemporary paintings.

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