Shanghai’s frigid winter seemed to resonate through the mildly biting spring, as if the haunting memories of the immediate past were unwilling to fade. Or at least that’s the feeling one was left with after viewing Wei Jia’s solo exhibition “Mildly Biting, Encountering Spring,” consisting of nine new paintings from the past three years. The outlook in these imaginary landscapes remains ambivalent, fearful, and anguished.

Wei seems to have taken a step back in order to get a larger view of the world. Rather than evoking the inner world of an individual, as in his previous work, here the artist