Samek Art Gallery to exhibit works by Xiaoze Xie
March-April 2003, L.T., 2003, oil on canvas
Posted: September 28, 2010
By Kathryn Kopchik
LEWISBURG, Pa. — The Samek Art Gallery at Bucknell University will host the exhibition, "Xiaoze Xie: Amplified Moments (1993-2008)," in the main gallery from Oct. 11 through Nov. 21.
Curated by Dan Mills, former director of the Samek, this 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 also will feature a select group of work in other media.
Xie will speak about his work on Thursday, Oct. 14, at 7 p.m. in the Gallery Theatre of the Elaine Langone Center.
Iconic images
Born in China in 1966, and educated in China and the U.S., Xie is the Paul L. and Phyllis Wattis Professor in Art at Stanford University; he was with the Bucknell art faculty from 2000 to 2009.
The exhibition will present a remarkable breadth of work in media, including paintings in oil, ink and wash on paper, photography, installation, and video, Mills said. "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," said Mills.
"Xiaoze Xie has long been interested in books and newspapers as carriers of cultural memory," said Eleanor Heartney, contributing editor to Art in America and Artpress.
"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," she said.
The Samek Art Gallery is on the third floor of the Elaine Langone Center, and is accessible by elevator. Admission is free. Gallery hours during the academic year are weekdays 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., Thursdays 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., weekends 1 to 5 p.m., and by appointment.
Contact: Division of Communications
