Shanghai born and bred artist Niu An has a delicate and waifish exterior that belies her interesting background. She has traveled far and wide in the course of her exceptionally rich and broad education, and she has never stopped learning. After a decade of diligent international "study" she came home to Shanghai, and she has remained a quintessential Shanghai girl. Quintessential Shanghai girls are open to new things and have a knack for assimilating them. They share their parents' attention to detail, love of the West, and sharp fashion sense. They are equally attracted to boyish men and fatherly men. Men are indeed the most important things in their lives, although they don't really trust them. As you might expect, Shanghai girls are self-absorbed. They want it all, but they want to take their time, and they will often treat you to a leisurely recounting of their misfortunes, blurring the line between truth and fiction. But don't look to them for literal truth—the biggest lie may contain the deepest truth. Beneath their smoothly elegant exteriors, there is a streak of wildness, and an indescribable sense of angst. Still, they constantly seek out pleasure.

It seems to me that Niu An's paintings are the perfect embodiment of these defining qualities of Shanghai girls.

Niu An herself is exquisite. She neglects no detail of her personal appearance, from the tips of her fingernails to the strands of her hair. "Make everything as beautiful as possible"—this is Niu An's favorite saying. It's easy for people to get the wrong impression about girls like her. For instance, you wouldn't picture her climbing up onto a crude bamboo scaffold, alone and unassisted, so that she could paint a glass surface 300 meters square. Nor would you imagine that, after returning home each night so frightened by the experience that she would break down and cry, she would nonetheless rise again at 8 the following morning so that she could scale the same glass wall and paint some more. Seeing her dressed in diaphanous finery, you would never imagine that she is emotionally starved and lonely. Her desire to embrace and be embraced is a constant. But when I look at her paintings I see no men in them, only the shadows of men, or little monsters that resemble men. These indistinct forms embrace the female subjects in a space where men are absent. Yet the shadows of men are everywhere, and they leave an indelible mark on her aesthetic.

The paintings Niu An has done in 2002 affect me with a much profounder sadness than her earlier works. She says that the men in the paintings she did right after her return to Shanghai in 2000 came straight from her imagination. In 2002, men have become something she can look at but not touch. On the occasions when she succeeds in touching them, they instantly slip away.

Niu An was destined to return to Shanghai. Shanghai is feminine; Shanghai's madness has a particular order to it. Here in Shanghai there is a blend of emptiness, repetition, self-indulgence, and sentimentality which is simultaneously beautiful and wide open. This is a place Niu An can find and maintain her freedom. Niu An's paintings are like candy, and people may overlook her artistic mastery because she is so beautiful. The candy Niu An makes is feminine, but I don't know whether it's men or women who are her greatest fans. As a young Shanghai artist, what most sets Ann New apart from the rest is this: the way that she squarely faces her body and her fragile psyche. This, and her extraordinary purity.

Niu An is in a class of her own.