Phillips New Now Sale to Feature Xie Lei’s ‘Swallow’

Xie Lei b. 1983, China Follow +

Paris-based Chinese painter Xie Lei will feature in Phillips New Now sale on 6 December.

Born in Anhui in 1983, Xie Lei graduated from Beijing’s China Central Academy of Fine Arts before completing a PhD in visual arts at the École normal supérieure and the Ecole nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris.

His painting Swallow (2021), which depicts a faceless man rendered in thin paint with broad brush strokes, takes its title from Modernist poet Mina Loy’s poem ‘The Dead’, which includes the lines ‘We are turned inside out / Your cities lie digesting in our stomachs’.

With an estimate of £6,000–8,000 (U.S. $7,600–10,200), Swallow is among the most affordable works in the auction, which features much bigger names.

Charlotte Gibbs, who heads the New Now category at Phillips, described the sale as ‘established blue-chip masters, cutting-edge contemporary, and emerging talent all in one auction.’

Other highlights of the exhibition include Andy Warhol‘s Portrait of a Lady (Natalie Sparber) (1984) for an estimated £150,000—200,000 (U.S. $190,000–254,000), Robert Colescott‘s Miscegenation (1975) for £150,000–250,000 (U.S. $190,000–240,000), and Alfie Caine’s Houlgate Villa (2020) for £12,000–18,000. (U.S. $15,000–23,000) —[O]

Main image: Xie Lei, Swallow (2021). Oil on canvas. 50.2 x 40.6 cm. Courtesy Phillips.