There’s a peculiar form of poetry to be found in Wei Jia’s paintings, a blending of motion and narrative: the physicality of presence, of becoming in space, melded to ancient myth. The myth, of course, never dies, its immortality bleating into a burdensome present, whence some new layers of meaning might become encrusted upon the surface. Look at 2020.2.10, 2020, with its Madonna holding the limp body of her crucified son in her arms—a standard Western art-historical motif, though here brought into being by Wei’s masterful abstract-figurative brushwork, which wrenches form out of the sepia