Xie Lei

Xie Lei (b. 1983) is a contemporary painter of personal conviction, channeling painting as a pathfinder towards a language capable of expressing his sensory universe. Approaching painting as a field of experimentation, Xie delves into the specificity of this medium in a contemporary world—discreet evocations from literary and cinematographic realms meld with a profound crucible of personal emotions to form phenomenological microcosms which dwell on the complex and ambiguous nature of existence. Somber yet luminous, Xie’s use of colour in his fluid, textured touch imbues a sense of ethereality in tensioned compositions of a world in-between: sleep and death, torment and eroticism, between that which is tolerated, forbidden, left unspoken or ultimately transgressed. Like an endless dawn, to view his work is to transcend a threshold and submerge into uncertain and ambiguous realms, where time is gifted alternative painterly perception. In a salutary manner, Xie Lei enchants a slowing of the spectator’s gaze and offers an elusion from the intoxicating world of immediacy and constant acceleration.