Xiaoze Xie
Gallery Affiliations: Gallery Paule Anglim, Chambers Fine Art
Region: Pacific Coast
My recent work deals with the vulnerability and fragmentary nature of historical memory, as well as our superficial perception of the world in the media age. Fragmentary Views (2001- ) is a series of paintings based on photographs of piles of newspapers found on the shelves arranged by librarians. What interests me most is the temporary nature of this mundane object, loaded with all-encompassing information on changing daily life: from front-page news to stock market columns to birth announcements and obituaries. Newspapers are recycled. Life goes on. In these paintings, the closeup view reveals fragmented news pictures and texts of seemingly unrelated events, from the quiet passage of the everyday to the disturbing conflicts and tragedies of our time. The accidental juxtaposition of images and texts suggests, and at the same time conceals, a larger, more complex social picture. In my Both Sides Now series (2008- ), each painting is based on a portion of a found sheet of newspaper; it appears that the texts and images on the back of the page have bled through to the front. The semi-transparent overlapping is another way to deal with the complexity and confusion of information found in the media.