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‘SHAN SA: TIME IN WEST LIGHT IN EAST AT MARLBOROUGH GALLERY

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NEW YORK CITY — “Shan Sa: Time in West, Light in East” is on view at Marlborough Gallery through August 8. Born in Beijing, Paris-based Shan Sa is celebrated as both a writer and a visual artist, recalling that in ancient China, poetry and painting were indissociable and formed a single whole that was the heart of Chinese art.

Sa’s exhibition will include a group of brush and ink works that were painted around the theme of her latest novel, Alexander and Alestria. Using traditional Chinese painting brushes, pigments and rice paper, Sa presents the fabled landscapes on the route of Alexander the Great from Greece through what are today Egypt, Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan, all the way to Pakistan and India.

A highlight of the exhibition will be a monumental painting, “Tornado and Red Mountain,” 2007. Painted in watercolor on Chinese rice paper, this work is mounted on a scroll in traditional fashion and measures more than 13 feet long. Here, Sa uses the medium to capture the intensity of a tornado as it approaches a vibrant red silhouette of a mountain range — all detail is removed but the strength of the mountain remains.

Also included in the show are more than 30 small format paintings, all watercolor on Chinese rice paper, in a series titled “Palm Painting Mirage,” all completed in 2007. Ranging in size from 2¼ by 4¼ inches to 5½ by 6½ inches, these abstract paintings feature luminous colors from aqua blue to pale rose. Intimate in scale, works in this series recall elements of calligraphy, landscape and the human form.

Since 2001 Sa has regularly exhibited her paintings in Europe and America, though this is her first solo exhibition in this country. A slightly larger version of this exhibition was first mounted in Tokyo and then by the city of Nagoya in February 2008.

The gallery is at 40 West 57th Street. For information, www.marlboroughgallery.com or 212-541-4900.