Michel Foucault quoted Borges in The Order of Things when describing the classification of Chinese animals: (a) those that belong to the emperor; (b) embalmed ones; (c) those that are trained; (d) suckling pigs; (e) mermaids; (f) fabulous ones; (g) stray dogs; (h) those that are included in this classification; (i) those that tremble as if they were mad; (j) innumerable ones; (k) those drawn with a very fine camel's-hair brush; (1) etcetera; (m) those that have just broken the flower vase; (n) those that at a distance resemble flies. Foucault claimed that it was this paragraph which made him guffaw and inspired him to compose that great book.

In a sense, we can say that Qin Qi followed the same inconceivable taxonomy in his painting which forms a strange space: a boat berthed on land, and a pavilion with a green peak and a rectangular structure on the boat; a row of bungalows beyond the boat; a burning little animal, and a group of sculptures resembling Greek myths... What kind of typology is it? All the elements in the picture are painted realistically and in detail-what kind of organic connection among them which exist in the same painting space? Can’t the canvas space be the limit of a typology? Didn’t he exclude some things from the canvas, and include other things in his painting according to some standards? Then to what standards did he choose these elements rather than others for his painting. If the canvas space can only contain certain types of things, then where does Qin Qi's taxonomy come from?

It seems that there is no connection among the elements in the painting. If the canvas space itself means a selective taxonomy, then this taxonomy, like the one mentioned by Borges, is challenging our stereotypes. In deed, human beings are not always subdued by the rationalized and carefully analyzed knowledge, or by some organic totality; rather they cannot resist the temptation of ecstasy to seek the heterogeneity. It is the secret desire of mankind to break down the rationality and order. As far as painting is concerned, people made all kinds of collages on the canvas long time ago, piecing together various elements without any connection randomly on the canvas. What collage pursues is the contingency, it thinks that the world is the result of all kinds of chances and randomness, some kind of blind configuration. It opposes organic and totality with chance and randomicity -- this is the intentional decry and compulsory teardown of rationality and totality. The collage itself repeatedly appeared in art originates from the challenging nature of the world outlook. Indeed, these paintings of Qin Qi bear some nature of collage -- they are the assembling and piecing-together of different elements-but they are different from collage pictures in terms of fundamental principle. Qin Qi did not embrace chances and he did not paint casually on the canvas, but rather carefully organized pictures. There is a great heterogeneity among the elements in the picture without a reasonable connecting rule. However, Qin Qi seemed to affirm the connectivity of these heterogeneous elements in his painting, he seemed to organize these totally different elements, and give them their due positions, or we can say that these different heterogeneous elements were carefully pre-arranged rather than put together carelessly. He treated these elements so carefully, painted each detail so carefully and arranged the space so carefully, because this is a precise and serious world. Even if the world looks so inconceivable, this inconceivable world might really exist tike this, and happen really so. Maybe they accord with the reality; or maybe they are really one type of the images in the world; or they are the world itself-why cannot the world itself be inconceivable? If the collage art always claims that the world cannot be organic and in order, so we can only be ironic about the rational world, then the paintings of Qin Qi recognize that the world may be strange and inconceivable, yet we must treat it seriously. If the collage art regards chance as its world out look, then the brushing work for the painting will be as random as casting a dice. If Qin Qi regards the world as accidental, then this accident does not lack profound logic, chance does not exclude grammar, it also needs carefully painting with the brush.

As a matter of fact, the paintings of Qin Qi are not the display of a dreamy world, on the contrary, it has the possibility of reality, it only gives you a sense of impossibility-this is a strange upside-down: people usually endow the dream with great freedom, with super real state. In the dreamy world, reality has no place to survive. But in Qin Qi's painting, reality is really dreamy, it even surpasses the dream, making it beyond the reach of imagination. Such reality, such trueness, is really inconceivable, just as inconceivable as a brothel located in a school, a prison built beside a department store, or a cemetery placed on the square before the city hall. But these realities can be found everywhere (an illegal brothel is sometimes just opposite the police office), people merely do not think so. Life reality is far beyond the dreamy reality. Or life itself drives the dream to its extreme, making the dream inferior. Qin Qi's paintings do not make a gulf between the reality and the dream, they are neither the catch and reappearance of the dream, nor the regarding the reality as one kind of dream. On the contrary, they frankly admit that the real world is really the dreamy world. The dreamy world is reality the real world-the boundary within the reach of one's imagination usually does not exceed the boundary drawn by the reality.

So the peculiar assembly of pictures is neither a discretional incidental world, nor a dreamy imaginary world, this is a world full of possibilities-Qin Qi keeps a serious attitude to this possible world. Rather than expressing any doubt towards this strange world, he affirms it. A watermelon revealing after the horse belly is cut open; a basketball backboard hanging on the wall of the living room; a pencil inserted to the cactus; a raincoat with two caps worn by two persons; a modern wagoner driving a chariot with an ancient general on; a panda, a grouse and a female sculpture juxtaposed; all these elements are connected strangely though, they are specific. This is an impossible possibility, an unreal reality, a wake-up of a dream, a compulsory naturalness and fictional specificality. What the pictures reveal is not psychological reality, but physical reality; not ideational reality, but spatial reality. As Foucault put it, this is a ''heterogeneous" space: It exists bona fide, but this reality has the dreamy grammar It seems that it only exists in imagination, but not limited to the imagination, it goes beyond the imagination and exists in the real world, thus existing in paintings. The paintings of Qin Qi are composed of specific realistic painting and dreamy grammar. The specific realistic painting endows the picture with certain contents; and the dreamy grammar makes these certain contents inconceivable. 

This inconceivability is just the rupture of the picture. The various heterogeneous elements in the picture decry and conflict with each other. They incise, sever and rip up the picture in which seems to be in self-convulsion, silently. In addition, these paintings are not flat colors, but full of colors repeatedly daubed and squeezed, this makes the colors more volatile in the picture. Perhaps, the breakup is imminent, the space of the picture is on the verge of collapse, and the real word is about to fall at any moment. Or maybe this world of picture is an enduring legend, a sweet Utopia and a never falling dreamlike paradise; or maybe this is a falling paradise, a disappearing Utopia and a dying mysterious universe. But the pictures by Qin Qi look like one as a whole, he neither carelessly collaged, nor adopted abstract painting rules. He applied a realistic perspective technique. Although different elements in the picture contradict with each other, by ambiguous meanings, convolution, interruption, repetition, turnabout, conflict and settlement, although they are the Utopian paradise, these elements themselves are realistic. I even want to say that they are homely, it seems to be a realistic painting rashly inserted to another realistic painting, or rather an image abruptly inserted to another image. It is right this abrupt insertion that makes the deliberate painting without obtrusion come into being.