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25/4/2008

XiaoBo

Platform China, Beijing

Great masters wrestled for long periods of time with the arrangement of various elements of a composition, making decisions about one object relevant to another, until they achieved a satisfactory composition. By contrast, I composed my paintings according to the random sequence in which the elements presented themselves to me.
---Artist’s statement

Xiao Bo’s paintings draw largely upon old photographs and film clips. The early works focused primarily on known or familiar photographic images of historic events, and in particular, immediately recognizable political leaders. These images are then transformed into paint to represent a frame-by-frame analysis of an instant, a process during which the moment becomes as important as the individual people who are depicted participating in it, and even the event itself. His recent works evidence a shift away from the focus on public persona towards the individual, both in terms of the human condition, and of situations concerning ordinary people. Here then, a move from the historical import of events past to the weight of past personal experience.

Xiao Bo’s use of a frame-by-frame sequence of paintings makes an obvious reference to film, to the passage of time—albeit short—and to the weight a minute can accrue in terms of its historic impact. This makes an extraordinarily powerful visual statement. But this statement would not be as powerful were it not for the nature and quality of the brushwork employed. This is perhaps the most delightful quality of Xiao Bo’s painting. The works take on an lyrical quality, even as the forms described are without question succinct, minimal, mapped out in highly efficient sweeps of line, almost as if Xiao Bo were sculpting figures and spaces on canvas. What Xiao Bo achieves is a marvellous combination of content and execution that both brings the paintings to life, and makes people think about how history is made.

In the new works produced for this exhibition, Xiao Bo’s paintings are moving beyond the simple act of painting. Emerging from his canvases we find a narrative of modern life, suffused with concerns for the tragedy that unfolds daily within the immediate social environment. Modern life sometimes feels so fragile. It changes abruptly from moment to moment, which brings Xiao Bo back to the fact of time, and how moments can change lives. The use of multiple canvases for each work creates a sense that anything can happen: “just like when reading a book you never know what’s going to happen on the next page.”

Opening april 26, 2008

Platform China
No. 319-1 East End Art (A) CaoChangDi Village, Chaoyang District - Beijing
Free admission

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