CLAVICLE, Xie Qi's Solo Exhibition at BANK
Imagine a solitary body in a dark stage. Suddenly, a ray of light flashes at it. It becomes the center of a show, a vessel for emotional expression as if it was separated from its mundane identity.
Xie Qi is a Beijing based painter and sculptor, her works lie somewhere in between the concrete and the abstract. In Clavicle, her most recent series of oil paintings, she depicts the human body, illuminated by dramatic light, with a special focus on the areas below and above the clavicle. This long and thin bone is like an axis holding the surrounding parts into focus. Upwards is the identity of the person, the head, the reason; downward is the tacit part, breast, arms, abdomen, legs, sex.
She painted many faces and bodies of her friends, evoking the beauty of the human form but also the multiple emotional states. Some are full body models, some are contours or simple bust portraits. It took the artist a long time to create the scenes: she would set the lights, ask her friends to pose, take pictures, draw in the canvases, paint the first layers, wait several days for it to dry and then paint the second layers.
Since November, BANK gallery is having Xie Qi's first solo exhibition in Shanghai, the show will continue for another three weeks and it is a result of several years of preparation. The Gallery extended the mise-en-scène from the paintings by installing similar lightening effects in the space, as if you are standing at the same place. The whole stage-like scene creates a certain atmosphere that can only be recognized when you leave some distance between you and the painting. At the end of the exhibition course, there is an interesting projection of Xie Qi's daily life scenes: a nameless street, windows, a bridge, a nice afternoon, and naughty cats – these are distinct comparisons between lightness and heaviness, life and stage.
Xie Qi at BANK Gallery
Until March 9th, from 10:00 AM to 18:30 PM
At BANK Gallery, At Bldg 2, 298 Anfu Lu,
安福路298号2号楼
This article was co-edited by 鲍比Poppy.
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