Xie
Nanxing self-inflicts deliberate and systematic crises. Through unceasing
questioning Xie has been able to develop a solid and very personal kind of
painting. His oil paintings, limited in number and often grouped as a
series, are characterised by large-scale canvases (220 x 380 cm, in the case
of a series from 2001–2), to which he painstakingly devotes himself for long
periods. As the final stage of a complex and multi-layered preparatory
process, which includes video recording and photography, Xie’s works are
generated from painted light, as if they were subjected to a photographic
developing bath. By means of a mastered technique, alien to any projection
of images onto the canvas, the subjects are slowly brought into being by
four thin coats of paint.
The source photographs are usually taken with a Polaroid or ordinary
automatic camera, and consist of distorted, unfocused, decentred, over- or
under-exposed images of everyday subjects: the flames of a gas range, a
corridor, a girl. It is precisely when these low quality pictures and
apparently banal images are transposed and enlarged on the pictorial surface
that the depicted reality shows itself in a new and bewildering light. For
the most part, the portrayed scenes are planned with manic fetishism, to the
minutest detail, and imbued with cryptic symbolism. With regard to his 2004
series of images of roosters, Xie explains: ‘Roosters are a very strange
creation of nature, but at the same time they are brimful of passion,
sensuality … their plumage … of course in my paintings this is even more
obvious because I displayed the dynamic state of my subjects, the direction
of their feathers. This is tantamount to making a first artwork on the
roosters’ body, but the eventual painting is to be considered as the
ultimate work of art.’
Through universally recognisable pictures and cinematographic rendering,
Xie’s ‘psychological painting’ lures the viewer, with its ostensible
familiarity and its sense of déja-vu, into the snare of his dreamlike
visions, triggering the viewer’s dim and confused recollections. Through a
strict control of the surface and a chilly realism that has recently been
merging into a certain degree of abstraction, Xie creates an inexplicable,
restless and dramatic visual language, while interpretation is left to the
subconscious activity of the observer (which is also why the major part of
the artist’s works remain untitled). When talking of work made in 2004, Xie
says: ‘To tell the truth [it] is like a stage; moreover, this time I did
nothing to conceal this dramatic character because I wanted to try and find,
both in realism and in abstraction, a way that would make people feel
confused and dizzy. I wanted to see how this combination would work…’
Since 2000–1, Xie has further piqued the viewer’s curiosity by including
sequences shot with a camcorder directly from the TV screen among his
preliminary materials. With the earlier paintings the viewer has the
impression of witnessing a single instant of an ongoing story, of which the
past and future developments remain wrapped in mystery. Now the artist seems
to supply a plot, but this is simply pretence. Although time expands, as
well as the dimensions of the paintings, and although more elements of the
same event – if there is one – are implied by the multiplication of the
canvases (see the huge blue triptychs), the nature of these works is still
unfathomable.
In the 2000–1 series the surface of the paintings imitates a screen with
stills from second-rate videotapes. Horizontal interference strips spread
across the width of the canvas and the light seems pixellated. Although the
image seems to refer to an objective view through a mechanical lens, it
nevertheless has a stifling atmosphere. A sense of pervading spiritual
spleen is conveyed by the use of blue, inspired by Yves Klein, which becomes
a dingy patina mantling all the works.
The 2002–3 series, comprising six paintings, also alludes to the
cinematographic sequence, cut and reassembled without narrative continuity.
In these works, Xie reproduces the same bare room – the artist’s studio –
from different viewpoints at different times. While the third, fifth and
sixth painting depict only the empty indoor space, the first, second and
fourth each portray a different naked person lying rigidly on the floor. The
paintings have become increasingly abstract, meditative and enigmatic.
Whereas in a series from 1998–9, which caused a stir at the 48th Venice
Biennale, the life force is still apparent in the bleeding men (all
transfigured self-portraits), in the more recent work the human subjects (Xie
and his parents) become blurred still lifes, remote volumetric masses, human
landscapes. Real or presumed death has a fascinating coldness; eternity is
plumbed and obsessively replicated in a claustrophobic mental space with no
way out, for Xie or us.
In contrast to the work of 2000–1, which has an emotional membrane that
throbs at a regular rate, the paintings in the 2002–3 series vibrate with
individual intensities. From a technical point of view, the visual obstacle
characterised by horizontal video lines disappears. Through a reduced
Cézanne-like palette the surface looks livid, speckled and grainy, like a
remote echo of Monet. If in this series Xie combines photorealism and a
purely pictorial gesture, it is in order to ‘see whether contemporary
viewers, in this epoch dominated by photography, are still able to deal with
a pictorial surface, even if it recalls a photographic process’.
Xie’s latest series of 2004 is composed of three paintings which foreground
an unfocused close-up image of a human-like figure. The hardly recognisable
subjects are portrayed in three different positions, from three different
angles: behind, above and beneath. Once more balancing realism and
abstraction, Xie further delves into the topic of death. The subjects –
roosters’ corpses of enormous dimensions – loom over the spectator and force
him to cope with death in its entirety and inevitability.
It is interesting to notice how the triptych recurs in recent works. In the
roosters series, for instance, there are three paintings, three roosters,
three camera angles, three main colours and three conflicting forces
intrinsic to the composition: implosion, explosion and stillness. For Xie
the number three is highly symbolic, with philosophical and psychological
connotations. Besides, it is through the clash, the exchange and the rhythm
of contrasting thrusts that Xie achieves a new level of understanding. Asked
about his forthcoming paintings, the artist comments: ‘Isn’t it a game full
of possibilities, an exciting game? In my works there are always many
conflicts that I can master, but also uncontrollable ones.’
Nataline Colonnello is an Italian Beijing-based art critic and curator