Xie Fan

Biography

Juan, a traditional Chinese painting support made from silk, has long been a material used in Chinese ink painting, and Xie Fan is fascinated by the translucent texture of this material, on which he applies layers of oil paint to create deep, dreamlike landscapes. Xie's experiment began in 2009 with a special treatment of silk that is not usually used with oil paint. For example, in order to resist the chemical erosion caused by oil paint on the silk, a special layer of alum sizing is coated on the surface, a technique borrowed from traditional Chinese silk painting. The translucent texture is not only a material base that provides a visual experience of light, but also a real space of diffuse reflection constructs by light, silk, frame, and pigment that physically transcends the conventional figure-ground relationship of the graphic art.

Xie studied the characteristics of various colors, such as transparent, translucent, and opaque. For him, the fascination of oil painting lies in the fact that they can be translucent, textured, or completely transparent. "I use the glazing technique in classical oil painting, so I always feel that my works are more classical", Xie said. Repeated experimentation and practice helped him to find his own style with light and shadow. Xie rendered the oil paint on Juan layer by layer, and painted it several times to achieve the final effect. For the artist, painting on Juan is not so different from painting on canvas. The overlapping colors maintain the purity, but the viewer can still feel the openness of the green and the boundlessness of the blue, a vividness that cannot be achieved by pure monochrome.

"But it's actually gray." Xie added.

Xie Fan chooses to live and work in Beijing and Sichuan, to think and paint relatively independently in a field far from the center. In his recent works, Xie is wary of the painting methods summarized by the knowledge system. He intends to keep a distance from his past intimacy and familiarity with painting, to turn away from empiricism, and to weaken the subjectivity and importance of technique in the creative process. This escape from the fixed pattern of thinking comes from Xie's reflection on painting itself. When the body and mind have become accustomed to painting and images, the artist hopes to return to the self in a calmer state, forgetting the so-called painting techniques of the past, and approaching the inner mind again, leading the search for images through the nearly instinctive doodles.

The extension of the emotions is reflected not only in the variation of images, but also in the diffuse sense created by the detailing of the plants in the works, which breaks the previous control over the partial occupation of images in the overall space, and supports the original chaos with the strengthening of the detailing. In the narrative of nature, Xie uses his perception of time and climate as a source for choosing images. He paints winter and summer in black and green respectively, contrasting the dazzling but fleeting spring and autumn with the long and tormenting but most routine winter and summer. Behind this choice is undoubtedly Xie's own sense of time. In his consistent visual exploration, the diffusion of images and the abruptness of blankness always proceed in parallel, with the penetration and entanglement of emotions adding to the richness of the experience.