Xiaoze Xie

[20] While in graduate school, he responded to his new American surroundings, painting scenes of junkyards, abandoned cars, and colorful, grocery-store abundance; he also initiated his soon-to-be signature "Library" works.

[20][21] In 1999, Xie began teaching at Bucknell University, while also pursuing exhibitions throughout the United States and in China; solo shows at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art (2000) and Charles Cowles Gallery (New York, 2002, 2004) soon followed, bringing him his first major critical attention.

[20][27][28] Critics note in his work a balance between formal concerns, beauty and expressiveness on one hand, and on the other, conceptual rigor that addresses contemporary issues such as war, violence, power, human tragedy, and the construction of cultural knowledge.

[31][32] He has explored this theme in many forms (decaying Chinese manuscripts, venerable reference books, crisp art archives, musical scores) found in libraries and museums from around the world.

[31][26][20] He paints in what critics describe as a soft, brushy, almost impressionistic manner that captures the play of ethereal light, texture (crinkled parchment, frayed leather edges, pockmarks) and shadow;[26][4][35][36] his technique achieves precision but at times dissolves into near-abstraction or blurring that suggests a camera lens or the haze of memory.

[25][38] In the late 1990s, Xie expanded his oeuvre, painting library stacks of consecutive, folded newspapers that critic Roberta Smith described as a "conceptually based way of measuring time and history.

[39][1][3][4] Writers suggest that the "Newspaper" paintings capture the chaotic, fleeting nature of the periodical—the immediacy and urgency of events upon publication and their quiet aftermath as yesterday's news,[27] as well as their relentless (often numbing) accumulation of information in an age of media saturation.

[20][47] He returned to that theme in the installation Rhythm of Time, Corridor of Memory (2010) and in the Denver Art Museum (DAM) and Asia Society shows, "Eyes On: Xiaoze Xie" (2017) and "Objects of Evidence" (2019).

[27][49] In the collaborative photographic/public intervention Last Days (2009, with Chen Zhong), he mounted newspaper on outside walls to create temporary monument/ruins throughout the Chinese city of Kaixian, which was razed, flooded and rebuilt on a different site as part of the Three Gorges Dam project.

[2][31][52] Xie has also been recognized with an artist-in-residencies at the Dunhuang Academy (2017, the inaugural residency) and Arcadia in Mount Desert Island (2012), which inspired a new body of work focusing on the history and content of the ancient Mogao Caves.