Mongolia meets the millennium in the work of Su Xin-Ping

Ronald McDonald.

Even in Mongolia?

"This is what happened after China opened the door to the West," explains Hue-Ping Lin, whose White Lotus Gallery in Eugene is featuring "Mongolia in Transition," a collection of Su's surrealistic lithographs, through Jan. 16. "This is a Mongolian scene, but it also reflects what is happening in all of China." The White Lotus Gallery, 760 Willamette St., is itself a bit of an oddity, a small-town gallery able to attract artists of international caliber and renown.

The White Lotus hosted Su himself for several days this month, holding a reception for the 38-year-old artist and taking him to meet Portland Art Museum print curator Gordon Gilkey, who has collected Su's work over the years.

Su is well known among contemporary Chinese artists. Now a professor at the Central Academy of Fine Art in Beijing, he has had solo shows in New York and Atlanta; in Sydney, Australia; in Hong Kong; and, of course, in the Chinese capital. His work is included in an exhibition titled "Inside Out: New Chinese Art," which is now at the Asia Society in New York and is coming to the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art next year.

Using Lin and her friend Guanghong Atman as translators, Su explained that he had always been interested in drawing and painting while growing up in Mongolia. He did not choose painting so much as it seemed to choose him, he said. Although he has lived in Beijing since 1986, Su's art focuses on the intense changes occurring in his homeland. Visually, his lithographs are simple, stark and direct. The lighting in his drawings is harsh and dramatic, Caravaggio in black and white, just like the light on the Mongolian plains. Su plays tricks with perspective and with shadows, reminding you a bit of M.C. Escher.

The people in his drawings nearly always look fractured, alienated or lost. In one, which he calls "Super Boxing," two government bureaucrats approach each other from opposite sides of a building's corner. Each man has his hands up, as though ready for combat; each man's shadow is in a slightly different pose, perhaps mocking the men's inability to control even their own appearances. A few of the prints are simple, lyrical statements: a woman with her shadow; a mother with her child; three girls shyly hiding their faces behind their hands.

One of his favorite images is that of the horse, an animal with deep significance to Mongolia. Su's horses are big, powerful and muscular, and may symbolize some deeper culture now lost in his homeland. Odd details emerge as you get closer to the work: Su's horses have three legs; the telegraph poles have no wires, and shadows in his pictures often have more than the usual amount of substance.

Su's world is oddly incomplete, desolate and silent. It's also surprisingly approachable, considering how far away it was produced, showing clearly that the tensely changing world of the late 20th century encompasses even Inner Mongolia.

Nov. 22, 1998