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 synthesise with a profound crucible of personal emotions to form phenomenological microcosms, somber yet luminous. Xie's use of colour in his fluid, textured touch imbues a sense of ethereality to tensioned compositions, subtle manifestations 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.

Text courtesy Sies + Höke.