THE LIBRARY

Xie Lei (1983, China) lives and works in Paris. 

Often producing monochromatic works in a dark palette of mixed colours, Lei Xie can perhaps be best described as a symbolist painter. Ancient rituals, traditional Chinese imagery or Western mythology form the subjects of many paintings. They are bathed in a suggestive and sometimes mysterious atmosphere reminiscent of ancient folktale and primeval epochs.

In Xie Lei's paintings, animals and plants are personified and seem to acquire a personality of their own, while human characters are intimately incorporated in their environment, forming one with nature. While these environments are depicted by conventional signs, Xie Lei often eschews delineating ground from sky, proximity from depth and foreground from background, thereby deliberately confusing the viewer's sense of time and space. This diaphanous ambiance is contrasted and balanced by a very painterly technique, with large patches of colours made up of visible brushstrokes producing a sense of spontaneity: they are manifestly the legacy of an individual imagination rather than objective artefacts.