The most interesting painters today are those who remain compelled to advance the medium’s potential through experimentation and innovation. In this regard, Xie Nanxing is a maverick. “The Second Whip With A Brush”, his solo exhibition at the Lucerne branch presents a selection of oil paintings from three of the artist’s recent series. Works from Xie Nanxing’s informally titled Canvas Print series are characterized by their stippled surfaces. Seen over time, their whorls and dots of pigment give way to vivid scenes that are mutually constructed by the artist and the viewer. Paintings from a second series are loosely based on illustrations found in an interior design catalogue, which Xie Nanxing transforms into spaces redolent with references both personal and art historical. The exhibition also features two recent “portraits,” part of an ongoing body of work that pushes a typically conventional genre toward surprising new possibilities. Thematically, “The Second Whip With A Brush” toggles between near-abstraction and a string of opaque, psychologically charged narratives, cohering around what the artist calls the “ashes” or “dust” found in every representation.

In the many of the works on view in “The Second Whip With A Brush”, there are no clear references to a familiar story. Instead, we are given clues and forced to look hard at what unfolds before us. To generate the exploded pointillism of the Canvas Prints, Xie Nanxing places a panel of rough, woven canvas between his brush and the painting; the daubs of color that comprise the nebulous figures in the finished work are the result of paint passing through the cloth and onto the work’s surface. When the Canvas Prints are viewed with care, forms begin to emerge from the ashes: the figure of the milkmaid can be made out, and Disney’s seven dwarves appear to create some mischief. As in his previous work, the scenarios are freighted with allusions to desire and violence, though in their reduced state they cannot spell out their conditions. Like finely drawn maps of territories long ago renamed, they point to an elsewhere we can only imagine, but can also be admired for their own aesthetic qualities.

Image: © Xie Nangxing, Courtesy of Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing-Lucerne