The SCAD exhibitions department presents “The Still Within”, an exhibition featuring recent paintings from three ongoing series by SCAD alumnus Caomin Xie (M.F.A., painting, 2001). This exhibition highlights Xie's paintings that manipulate digital media and use intricately repetitious patterns and designs to draw attention to the act of image making in its various forms. Blurring the lines between painting, photography and motion graphics, Xie depicts the complexities inherent in contemporary technology and identity as conveyed via unique interpretations of cultural references such as Buddhist mandalas and Chinese opera facial makeup.

Xie's bold, evocative work takes an in-depth look at how media and painting have evolved in the dialogue of contemporary art. Xie employs the theme of metonymy, or the representation of one object or concept for that of another, throughout the three series. Rather than simply mimic video or computer screens his complex paintings instead provide a conceptual link between painting and digital artwork.

"If painting is comprehended as a productive practice, we cannot differentiate much among painting, photography or motion graphics. All of them are the same as image producing. Image producing is desire's practice as metonymy and metaphor," said Xie.

In Xie's "Thousands Buddha" series, the artist offers his interpretation of Buddhism's beliefs of the infinite universe and the self as microcosmos. Every element featured in the series' paintings exhibit finitude and infinitude. According to Xie, these elements not only appear in a long-term contemplation, but in a short glance.

Paintings from "The Ruins' Mandala" series convey Xie's interpretation of the Buddhist concepts of creation, maintenance, destruction and emptiness. He drew his inspiration from the Buddhist sand paintings known as mandalas, in which different colored sands are processed like pictures changing in a temporal kaleidoscope. "It reflects the relationship between happenstance and the eternal return of the whole universe," noted Xie. "Not only can we search for information about universal existence in the detail of chance, we can also find contingent chance in the existence of the whole universe. When we are confronting the stupendous creative and destructive powers of today's technology, for me, the mandala is the best visual metaphor of our world."

"The Facial Makeup of Chinese Opera" series is a result of the artist's thoughts on the question of cultural identity. According to Xie, the makeup used in Chinese opera provides the link yet blurs the reality between the actor's own identity and that of the character he or she is representing. In essence, it is the makeup that creates the character but destroys the actor's own identity, allowing a man to portray a woman and a youth to play an elder. "It is not a representational depiction of a natural subject, but a revelation of its creative nature through its splitting from its signifier as subject," said Xie. "The demonstration of the facial makeup of Chinese opera is a jeering overturn of the essentialism."