Two brilliantly paired solo exhibitions recently opened at Galerie Urs Meile in Beijing, bringing together two painters from dramatically different backgrounds — one Chinese and emerging, the other Swiss and reverentially established. The shows, on view through April 4, offer a study in dichotomies.

Qiu Shihua’s oil paintings might initially be mistaken for pale monochromes, updates, perhaps, on Malevich’s white-on-white compositions of the early 20th century. Yet as one's eyes adjust to Qiu’s refined palette of Arctic ivories and vanillas — a sensation similar to the heightened sensitivity one feels upon entering a darkened room — these horizontal canvases slowly materialize into ethereal landscapes and vistas of remarkable beauty. Seeing these works in person is an almost tactile experience; your eyes move about the painting like fingers scanning brail.

The longer you spend with each of the six works on view, made between 1995 to 2009, the more details emerge: thickets of pine trees are covered in snowdrifts and bathed in a soft winter light; elsewhere, the disk-like sun’s rays cut through clouded skies and shimmer on the sea’s surface. With a focus on atmospherics that is inspired, in part, by the artist’s interest in Taoist principles about the natural world, Qiu’s paintings envelop the viewer in a quietude that won’t be soon forgotten.

With their restless play of positive and negative space, Berne-based artist Julia Steiner’s new black and white gouache paintings are as stark as Qiu’s works, but create an altogether different affect, drawing the viewer in with their dazzling, morphing surfaces. Drawn to Beijing by an interest in Chinese landscape painting, Steiner created the series of large-scale works on paper during her recent stay at Galerie Urs Meile Studio’s artist-in-residency program. In some works, such as Nachtmarkt (Night Market), 2009, plumes of smoke and splintered fragments seem to burst from painting’s surface, as if one of Cornelia Parker’s explosive installations has been miraculously caught on paper.

With Nest, 2009, the Steiner exploits the work’s inherent dynamism by placing a circular painting directly on the floor, where it becomes a pulsing, swirling sphere that refuses to rest. Agglomeration, 2010, finished only a few days before exhibition’s opening, is the show’s masterwork: a 90.5 by 179.5 inch, abstract landscape bustling with shapes suggestive of cragged mountains and forking valleys, figures and shape-shifting, biomorphic forms. It’s as if the Shroud of Turin has been laid over a Northern Song-era landscape painting and has successfully absorbed its essence. At 28 years of age, Steiner shows a great maturity in her work and tremendous potential; this exhibition proves she’s one to watch.