“As an artist, I feel the responsibility to speak to the lived experiences, personal and collective memories, and to become the voice of one’s time.” 

Artist Xiaoze Xie is known for his hyperrealistic, large-scale paintings—many of them more than 6,080 square feet–taken from scenes of everyday life, and often depicting images of books: worn, tattered pages, libraries full of dusty tomes, shelves, and stacks of paper. These images are striking in both scale and detail, causing viewers to reflect on our shared humanity, our past and present, and the beauty inherent in things we often overlook.

Xie grew up in a rural area in the Guangdong Province of China. He was always interested in art and drawing, often copying illustrations he saw in books. An early inspirational moment stands out to him from childhood: while he and his father visited an artist named Huang Zhi, Xie watched him grab a sketchbook and capture an image of his father in moments with just a few strokes of the pencil. Zhi suggested Xie try to draw from life rather than copy illustrations. “This was my first, and perhaps the only serious art lesson in my childhood,” Xie recalls.

Xie’s initial career path leaned toward architecture, which he studied in Beijing; but soon after he earned his architecture degree, the itch of painting took over, and he changed course. He took a graduate program in art in Beijing before moving to the US, where he earned an MFA at the University of North Texas in 1996.

“Most of my paintings are large, realistic, and with a reference to photography,” he says. “Many people who only saw reproduced images of my work often recognized the photographic aspect while overlooking the nuanced painterly treatments, such as the layers of color and texture, and brushwork. A painting is not just an image, it is also an object with a sense of scale, weight and touch, an object that invites our physical involvement.”

The large-scale canvases bring visual impact to each of his images, allowing for details and textures that keep the eye lingering on a painting for far longer than it might on the photographs the paintings reference or on smaller-sized works. The result gives what are often ordinary-looking scenes a feeling of importance and power.

After experimenting with different subjects for his paintings, books became a frequent part of his works starting in the early 1990s. “I was fascinated by both the potential meanings and forms of the subject,” he says. “For me, books are the material form of something abstract, such as thoughts, memory, and history. Over the years, I have painted Western volumes, Chinese thread-bound books, museum library collections, and eventually newspapers. I see this ongoing body of works as one project growing out of a simple idea.”

While exploring these books and libraries, he also became captivated by the topic of banned books—what they mean, the political circumstances around a given book, and what these bans have meant for our history and collective understanding of the world. His many paintings of books and libraries fed into this fascination. “As I continued to paint books,” he explains, “I was also interested in what people have done to books. I have made installations based on specific historic events of book destruction. All these led to the project on the history of banned books in China. The books in my Chinese Library paintings are all closed and stacked; however, in the photographs of banned books, their pages open for the first time. The pursuit of freedom of expression often comes at a cost, and should not be taken for granted.”

All of this speaks to Xie’s interest in using his art to explore the shared history of modern society. “As an artist, I feel the responsibility to speak to the lived experiences, personal and collective memories, and to become the voice of one’s time. The juxtaposition of historical and modern styles, and images from the past and the present have opened new possibilities.”

Today, in addition to his wide range of gallery exhibitions, he teaches art at Stanford, where he is not only able to mentor young artists, but also find inspiration in their work and ideas. “I love working with MFA graduate students. It is always exciting to learn about their innovative ideas and watch the development—sometimes radical changes—of their work.”

“Looking back, you realize that life is full of dilemmas and detours, and it takes a long time to figure out what you really want to do,” he muses. Ultimately, where Xie has landed is exactly where the artist Huang Zhi pointed him when he was a boy: capturing images from life. He’s done it in large scale, with impeccable detail, and has had the opportunity to share his work with the world.  

xiaozexie.com
Instagram: xie.xiaoze