Reimagining the Lystra Scene

Liu Dan is a renowned Chinese artist who reinterprets historical Western art using traditional Chinese ink-painting techniques. In this work, he took Saint Paul and Saint Barnabas at Lystra, by Dutch painter Willem de Poorter in 1636, as his starting point but abandoned most of the details that define the human forms. Instead, he presents characters as rock formations with grotesque faces; the original story is lost or disrupted. The landscape shows Liu’s attention to space and scale and to the volume and texture of the rocks. This new interpretation of an old painting encourages viewers to look at a fantastical world with fresh eyes.