XIAO JIANG

Xiao Jiang grew up in the mountains of Jinggangshan, located in China’s rugged Southeastern interior. Now he lives in Shanghai, more than six hundred miles away. Xiao returns to the land where he grew up through memory and paint.

Studio scenes and natural settings, while at times blended, are for the most part distinct in his work. For his natural scenes, Xiao works from personal cell phone photographs and from memory: in particular he is inspired by the way that colour changes with distance. The natural world is rendered in angular, near-abstract geometric arrangements, while interiors contain a expansiveness akin to mountainscapes.

Burlap, a rough, fibrous material favoured for its cheapness and durability, is a preferred surface for Xiao’s oil paintings. Like a rough, steep road, its friction compels one to move slowly. Burlap stubbornly asserts its fibres in the texture of the paint. For Xiao, burlap forces his process to slow down, a quality he matches in his compositions, in which muted colours are heavily layered, therefore imperceptible to an impatient eye. In life, too, Xiao prefers to move slowly, making space for introspection and subtlety.

In Studio Scene (2022), a stack of canvases bisects an interior striped by shadow and light. A woman reads in the corner of a room, the edges of which have all been rendered in red. A window exposes a mountain scene, where a small figure, clutching a hiking stick, peers back—behind him, a path leads into the folds of green mountains. Through the window, Xiao allows memory to collide with direct observation: the result exists only in his imagined world, in which his studio in Shanghai is transported to the mountains of Jinggangshan.

In Xiao’s work, people are left faceless, welcoming projections, and embracing ambivalence. Gusts of wind, a faint moon, and jagged skylines are rendered stylistically, which Xiao folds into scenes in the late afternoon, or at dusk. Natural settings are dotted with telephone towers; green swaths swallow up buildings; a road disappears behind a sharp curve. Figures traverse rough passages, hiking along dirt paths, their form humbled by the rugged horizon.

Xiao obtained a degree from China Academy of Art in 2003. Recent solo exhibitions include Vanguard Gallery, Shanghai (2021); LEO Gallery, Hong Kong (2020); Vanguard Gallery, Shanghai (2018). This is his first solo exhibition with the gallery.