Chambers Fine Art is pleased to announce the opening on September 7, 2013 of Multiple Perspectives: New Works by Xie Xiaoze. Born in Guangdong, China in 1966, Xie Xiaoze graduated from Tsinghua University and the Central Academy of Arts and Design, Beijing before moving to the United States and settling in Texas where he continued his studies in a very different environment. He is currently the Paul & Phyllis Wattis Professor in Art, Department of Art & Art History, Stanford University, California, USA.
As a realist painter by vocation, early in his career Xie found a way to combine his passionate interest in Chinese history and current world events with more formal concerns by focusing on the materials stored in archives and library stacks as the subject matter of his paintings. Every three or four years Xie has widened the scope of his thematic material, an adjustment that frequently requires a reconsideration of the emphasis placed on verisimilitude and abstraction in the individual works.
For the current exhibition Xie expands the range of his source material by bringing it completely up to date with images drawn from Weibo. As with most of his exhibitions, however, newly conceived material is seen to grow out of earlier pre-occupations and this is the case with Multiple Perspectives.
One gallery will be devoted to new works from the Chinese Library series and a selection of works from the Both Sides Now series. The former were painted while Xie was living in Beijing on the Stanford Beijing Overseas Studies Program in 2012. While departing from photographic source material as is normally the case, two monumental paintings – Chinese Library No. 54 and Chinese Library No. 55 – verge on abstraction, transformed by Xie’s bravura handling of his materials. In complete contrast are the paintings from the Both Sides Now series which depart from newspaper pages in which images from the reverse have bled through to the front. Using a complicated process and painting in both oil and acrylic, Xie achieves richly layered effects that convey the saturation with information characteristic of modern society. The tragic and the trivial co-exist within the confines of each canvas.
The second large gallery will be devoted to the new group of paintings inspired by Weibo. Inevitably, perhaps, Xie turned to Weibo as the most current means of conveying the kind of information and opinions that used to be conveyed through books and newspapers. Far more immediate in effect than printed media, and arguably more powerful in impact, Weibo required Xie to consider various ways of using this imagery in the most effective way. Painted in oil on aluminum panel rather than on canvas, Xie’s Weibo-derived panels will be installed in a random fashion on walls painted a neutral shade of grey that conveys the anonymity of cyberspace.
To a degree, Multiple Perspectives may be viewed as an installation which powerfully evokes the changes that have taken place in means of communication as printed matter gives way to the internet. There is a poignant contrast between the monumental Chinese Bookspainted in a traditional manner and the fleeting images derived from Weibo, plucked from obscurity and freely transformed on aluminum panels.
北京前波画廊将于2013年9月7日起举办展览《透叠：谢晓泽新作》。谢晓泽1966年出生于广东，从清华大学及北京中央工艺美术学院毕业后移居美国，并在德克萨斯州继续深造他的学业，现为美国加利福尼亚州斯坦福大学艺术系的终身教授。
作为一个现实主义画家，谢晓泽对中国历史及现今世界时事一直抱有浓厚的兴趣，并在其艺术生涯初期就找到了一种独特的方式与绘画形式问题结合起来，那就是将储藏于档案室中的材料以及图书馆中那一堆堆书籍作为绘画主题。每三、四年他便拓宽一次作品题材范围，这样的调整使他不得不经常重新探索每件作品中所注重的真实性及抽象性。
本次展览中谢晓泽再次扩展了其创作题材，与时俱进地将微博图像加入了素材范围之内。与此同时，就如他的其他展览一样，《透叠》中新的构思和题材也是从他过去的不同系列长期累积而成的精华。
一号展厅中展出的是《中国图书馆》系列中的新作，以及《正反视角》系列中的部分作品。前者是2012年谢晓泽在北京斯坦福海外研究计划任期时完成的。他的许多作品题材来源于照片，而此次展览中的两幅大型油画《中国图书馆54号》及《中国图书馆55号》却接近于抽象形式，体现出艺术家对媒材的大胆尝试。而后者则以报纸为主题，每一页报纸反面的图像也从正面显透出来。谢晓泽运用了油彩和丙烯两种媒材，并通过非常复杂的创作过程达到了丰富的层次感，描绘出现代社会资讯饱和的现象。不幸和琐碎的事件也错综交杂地分布在每幅画面之中。
二号展厅中展示的是一组受微博启发而创作的新作。在如今中国，微博已成为最流行的信息来源，过去由书籍和报纸所传达的信息和见解如今常常通过这一渠道迅速地传递给大众，于是微博图像自然也成为谢晓泽的创作主题。微博讯息比印刷媒体更直接、更具影响力，这迫使艺术家必须考虑不同的表达方式来有效地表现微博图片。此系列以铝板代替画布，并随意挂在浅灰色的墙面上，以暗示当代网络通讯匿名的特征。
从某种程度上讲，《透叠》生动地反映了讯息传播媒介由印刷品发展到互联网的巨变。谢晓泽将微博上稍纵即逝的图像转译到铝板上，与用传统方式绘制的大幅中国书籍绘画形成了鲜明的对比。