XIE Fan

In recent years, Xie Fan started to make consistent use of a semi-transparent, silky textural base for all of his creations. Through a concerted use of light, silk, picture frames and oil paint, a physical space for diffuse reflection is constructed. This choice of painting method distinctly sets off the visual immateriality to which the artist adheres. Hence, from a physical angle, the artist has managed to surpass the “image vs. its supporting structure”-relation, which is conventional within the form of traditional (“flat”) canvas painting. It’s as though the spectator gets a reflected glimpse of an image projected onto his/her retina, causing the sense of sight to be shifted back into Plato’s allegorical “cave” in that precise moment. Using a dialectical method, the artist exposes the essence of vision.

Xie Fan (b. 1983, Jiangyou, Sichuan Province, China) received his BFA from the Sichuan Fine Arts Institute (SFAI) in 2005. Recent solo exhibitions include: Xie Fan: Various Fires, Le Consortium & Academie Conti, Dijon, France (2024); Dionysus’s Screen, Galerie Marguo, Paris, France (2023); Sediment, Sifang Art Museum (Tongren Road Space), Shanghai, China (2022); Back To The Footlights Tomorrow, WHITE SPACE, Beijing, China (2014). Recent group exhibitions include: Xinkang Restaurant, Blunt Society, Shanghai, China (2024); Night is the Shadow of the Earth, Wind H Art Center, Beijing, China (2023); Silkroad on the Moonlight, Gowolhun, Seoul, South Korea (2017); Mountain Sites: Views of Laoshan, Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing, China (2016); The Moscow Biennale, All-Russia Exhibition Centre (VDNKh), Moscow, Russia (2015); Absolute Collection Guideline, Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing, China (2015). Xie Fan currently lives and works in Beijing and Chengdu.