Xiaoze Xie

Xiaoze Xie: Amplified Moments (1993-2008)

Curated by Dan Mills

Organized by the Samek Art Gallery

Since the mid nineties, artist Xiaoze Xie has created an impressive body of work. His sumptuously painted and conceptually rigorous paintings of stacks of newspapers, decaying books, museum libraries, and media images of current events have been exhibited throughout the US and internationally with increased frequency and critical acclaim. Since the mid 1990s, Xie has also created and exhibited conceptually well-realized installations, photographs, videos and prints that relate to and expand upon the focus of his paintings.

"Xiaoze Xie: Amplified Moments" is the first major exhibition to include significant works from each of Xie’s painting series: the “Library Series," “Chinese Library Series," “The Silent Flow of Daily Life," “Fragmentary Views," “Museum Libraries," and Chinese ink and wash paintings based on news images. It will also include a select group of work in other media.

"Xiaoze Xie: Amplified Moments" will present a remarkable breadth of work in media including paintings in oil, ink and wash on paper, photography, installation and video. Since the mid 1990s, Xie has produced a substantial body of work that, on one hand, focuses on the inextricably intertwined contemporary news and the media, and on the other, is a meditation on time, memory and history. And during this period, he has created many powerful and iconic images.

"Xiaoze Xie has long been interested in books and newspapers as carriers of cultural memory. As more information is disseminated via the internet, these exemplars of “old technology” begin to take on the aura of antique relics, resembling ancient parchments full of fragmentary messages from a half forgotten past. Unlike their digital kin, they are physical objects that suffer the ravages of time. Thus they provide a haunting metaphor for the gradual decay of human knowledge and recollection." Eleanor Heartney