9/2/2007
Xia Xing
GalerieUrsMeile, Luzern
2005. Ever since 2004, the artist selects front-page pictures from the "New Beijing News" and transfers the scenes in these press photos, more or less faithfully to details, in oil and often with broad brushstrokes, on canvasses of identical size.
2005
Every day brings new papers, new news, as it were. Like some tidal phenomenon, the deluge of texts and images is flooding the reader's previously stored information. The picture chronicle begun in 2004 by Xia Xing (born in 1974 in Shihezi, Xinjiang province, now living in Beijing) is an intervention into this stream of oblivion. Ever since 2004, he selects front-page pictures from the "New Beijing News" (Xin Jingbao) and transfers the scenes in these press photos-more or less faithfully to details-in oil and often with broad brushstrokes, on canvasses of identical size: 70 cm in height and 100 cm in width.
Each annual sequence is composed of 60 pictures, each titled with the publication date of the newspaper. The related title page that carried the original photo and the article that went with it are technically part of the work though not necessarily displayed as well.
Xia Xing's works create an imaginary reversal of time, they turn the standard dogmas of press photography into their opposite. For the principle of such photos is to reach the reader with the most possible up-to-dateness, i.e. with little or no temporal distance from the events shown in the photos. Xia Xing, however, gets the "water under the bridge" to flow back and invests it with a new function. Detached from the concrete headlines, his picture sequence make us realize the transitory character of emotions such as curiosity, outrage or dismay. Recurring motives like the meeting of politicians, mass gatherings, police interventions, mine accidents or environmental disasters show a continuity of the briefly topical, which in retrospect takes all the punch out of the punch line caption.
While the artist displays scenes of political power presentation with strikingly flat and almost monochrome coat application, he composes all faces-but often also the backdrops of scenes portraying human distress or even happiness-with a well-managed flickering illumination. It is the almost violently expressive brushwork and the intense coloring of the paintings which artistically reflect a state of agitation. The worm's, or bird's, eye view in many photos that is transferred to the painting adds an additional element of disconcertment.
The unmistakable artistic statement of Xia Xing's annual sequence is the alignment of formats. Regardless of the original's subject, all scenes are brought into a landscape layout. Hanging all paintings closely together at the same height adds to convey to them the status of a collective entity. "I want to do away with the customary interpretation of events as being important or unimportant", says the artist. High-ranking politician or coal miner, the heights and the depths of human life, corruption scandal or stock market trends: Xia Xing fits them into the stream of images, lets them become part of a successively proceeding history that we are witnessing day by day-or the facets of which we take account of, by reading the papers, for example. The artist snatches some showcase occurrences from oblivion, revives them in the process of painting, invests them with a personal touch by choosing a particular technique, and then surrenders his image collection to the viewer. By going for a form of painting that is in undeceivable proximity to its objects, this painter assumes the mission of archivist and records manager. And it is not only information as such that is archived here but also the empathetic connection between the occurrence (as well as the persons involved in it) and the viewer.
Ulrike Munter
Opening: 10 February 2007, 15 - 17
Galerie UrsMeile
Rosenberghohe 4 - Luzern
Free admission