An oriental twist to a rather dotty technique - if you get the point

Pointillism, a word coined by critic Felix Feneon to describe Georges Seurat's La Grande Jatte in 1886, uses dots of contrasting colour to create subtle changes in form. The dots are so close to each other that, when viewed from a distance, they can't be distinguished and appear to blend into each other. Artists and critics rejected the technique at the time.

Beijing-based contemporary artist Nan Qi (born Wang Rongqiang) is pushing pointillism one step further with an oriental twist. While embracing Seurat's technique, he has created his own style by superimposing ink dots to create depth and colour.

'Nan Qi's dots constitute a new way of using the brush,' says Lu Pintian, a researcher with the Fine Art Institute at the China Academy of Arts in Beijing. 'Nan Qi has developed a style that is unique.'

The artist says he developed the technique recently. 'Although I do some oils, most of my work is ink on paper, using the traditional freehand technique xieyi shuimo. I used to do a lot of landscapes, using geometric shapes. Then, in 2002, I started a new series on tigers and decided to use dots for the whiskers.'

Ink and Sex, at Singapore's Yisulang Art Gallery, features Nan Qi's latest works, along with that of 13 other artists such as Hu Yongkai and Jin Weihong, on the theme of sexuality.

'Sex as an artistic subject in contemporary Chinese painting is still quite new and artists are quite daring,' says gallery owner Christina Sui, who commissioned the works. 'We thought it would be an interesting subject for ink and paper.'