Xie Molin's solo exhibition is at Beijing Commune Sat 1-October 13.
The dusty roads and piles of trash that choke the north-eastern suburb of Heiqiao are unlikely to feature on any postcards. And yet here you’ll find a quietly cooking hotbed of creativity. This community of artists is where Xie Molin, one of Beijing’s up-and-coming talents, has spent the last two years creating his own brand of abstract, minimalist-inspired paintings.
Xie is in his early thirties, but his earnest-yet-quiet mannerisms make him seem younger. He cuts a slight figure and, as he talks, his eyes are wide under their furrowed, messy brows. He has been preparing for his upcoming exhibition at Beijing Commune; a series of carefully crafted paintings limited to a palette of black, white and yellow.
The artist has attracted attention for his abstract canvases, not least because he has discarded that most traditional of painter’s tools, the brush. ‘People have been saying for quite a while that painting is dead. It no longer excites people’s interest, because they think the possibilities in the medium are limited,’ Xie says, leaning forward.
Instead of a brush, he uses computers and self-built industrial-style machinery. At the back of the studio is a large contraption that he designed with a professional engineer to create his paintings. A table-like surface is straddled by a pronged machine, connected to an old desk top by a series of wires. It looks like a mad scientist’s loom as it begins weaving its pre-programmed patterns into heavy-quilted paint.
When we visit, Xie’s busy creating a large piece of pure lemon-yellow; there’s a loud revving as the steel rods move across the surface, delicately scraping a thick layer of the freshest paint. Sometimes they dip up and down, as the machine carves lines into the wet gloop. The last attempt at this very work lies slumped against the wall, to be discarded. ‘Too rough, too many bubbles,’ he says, running his hands over it. ‘I’d like it to be perfect.’
Xie hopes to break new ground with his technique, which has demanded extreme patience and plenty of experimentation. Some observers say that he already has. ‘Normally the brush is operated by painters to express their vision. Using different tools brings new possibilities to painting,’ Xie explains. But it’s not just about updating the tool, it’s also about using it to create technically proficient, original and arresting art. ‘The final word in my work, for me, is still in the aesthetic feeling.’
‘The traditional way of painting by hand is very difficult to be excellent at nowadays, and it feels forced anyway,’ he says. ‘I can paint well by developing in the digital world we live in. I still hope that people will be drawn in by the work. A good artist should always want people to stay in front of his paintings.’
Abstraction in art, of course, is nothing new, and neither is resorting to methods that leave the brush behind. US artists such as Ad Reinhardt made abstract pieces back in the ’40s. The legendary Jackson Pollock reinvented his relationship with the canvas by hovering above it, dripping and dolloping paint from the air. In fact, early last year, Pace Beijing showcased one of Xie’s works alongside those of Mark Rothko and Donald Judd, the founding fathers of American abstract expressionism and minimalism, seeking a visual connection between the works.
Xie’s paintings possess, thanks to the machine he built last year, a certain aesthetic of their own. Shadows play over the patterned grooves that texture their surfaces, sliding under your eyes as you move before them. Using subtly shifting gradients of colour adds to the effect of industrial perfection and detail, though the mechanical nature of the work is not so obvious to the naked eye. Works that look like they could be screen-savers in photographs come to life in the flesh.
‘I like minimalism,’ says Xie, as he discusses the inspirations for his work, citing late US artist Fred Sandbank as a favourite. ‘I feel that it is closer to art itself. Its possibilities are not easily described in words.’
But while Sandbank’s works, which consisted of multi-coloured strings stretched across galleries, or wooden blocks with lines carved into them, were intended to be experienced purely on an aesthetic level, Xie’s are also consciously about wider society. ‘I would call the yellow here “the Confident Yellow”, because as an identity and a skin colour [in China], “yellow” has not been confident in the last 100 years.’
The yellows and blacks in these paintings might seem like tired metaphors for Chinese hair and skin, but they represent something deep for the artist. ‘We grew fearful and unconfident because of losing wars with Westerners,’ he says. ‘The Olympics show this clearly: we want to win lots of gold medals to show that we are able.’ Xie’s experiences working in a Chinese takeaway in Edinburgh and getting to know illegal Chinese aliens there took their toll – he dreams of a China with more to be proud of. Then there is the machine. Industrialised China, with all its complexities, its positives and its downfalls, is rather like the undulating grooves in Xie’s works.
Most of all, though, Xie is seeking a new direction for Chinese artists. ‘I think I take art very seriously,’ he sighs before we leave. But then he’s buoyant again, saying that he’ll continue experimenting – perhaps even completely changing his mode of working in five or ten years. Whatever he does, we suspect it will be worth seeing. Clare Pennington
Originally posted in Time Out Beijing
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