Art / Xiaoze Xie

From the Artist

:: Account ::

I am inter­est­ed in the tem­po­rary nature of news­pa­pers as every­day objects loaded with all-encom­pass­ing infor­ma­tion of chang­ing dai­ly life: from the front-page news to stock mar­ket columns to birth announce­ments and obit­u­ar­ies. News­pa­pers are recy­cled. Life goes on. “The Silent Flow of Dai­ly Life” (1998 – ) is a series of paint­ings that depict news­pa­per stacks found on the shelves as arranged by librar­i­ans, usu­al­ly marked or labeled with dates. In these paint­ings, the abstract pat­tern on the side of a stack gives away no spe­cif­ic infor­ma­tion. In the “Frag­men­tary Views” series (2001– ), the close-up view of the news­pa­per stack reveals frag­ment­ed news pic­tures and texts of seem­ing­ly unre­lat­ed events, from the qui­et pas­sage of the every­day to the dis­turb­ing con­flicts and tragedies of our time. The acci­den­tal jux­ta­po­si­tion of images and texts sug­gests, and at the same time con­ceals, a larg­er, more com­plex social picture.

What can you say, in the face of what’s hap­pen­ing every day? Noth­ing comes as a shock, real­ly. In the news­pa­per paint­ings, I am try­ing to find a way to com­bine my ideas and inter­ests in the ear­li­er “Library Series” paint­ings of decay­ing books and instal­la­tions deal­ing with his­tor­i­cal events in a sim­ple format.

Xiaoze Xie is an inter­na­tion­al­ly rec­og­nized artist who has exhib­it­ed exten­sive­ly in the U.S. and abroad. His work is in the per­ma­nent col­lec­tion of the Muse­um of Fine Arts Hous­ton, Oak­land Muse­um of Cal­i­for­nia, San Jose Muse­um of Art, and Scotts­dale Muse­um of Con­tem­po­rary Art. Xie received the Painters & Sculp­tors Grant from the Joan Mitchell Foun­da­tion (2013) and the Pol­lock-Kras­ner Foun­da­tion Grant (2003). Xie is the Paul L. & Phyl­lis Wat­tis Pro­fes­sor of Art at Stan­ford University.