Xiaoze Xie: Confrontation and Disruption

Xie is an unusually alert observer of the harsh realities of present-day politics around the globe and how these realities are depicted in Western and Chinese newspapers and social media.

"This is a lengthy span of history and memory.  Then coming back to this exhibition, time is shortened to merely one day. Like a daily newspaper in today’s media. In the beginning, I was painting a silent pile of newspapers, like a still-life, lying on the shelves of the library." - Xiaoze Xie

newspaper cover of Nelson Mandela

December 7-8, 2013, I.N.Y.T. (International New York Times), 2015

newspaper cover of unrest

February 3, 2007, L.G.D.S. No. 1 (La Gazzetta dello Sport), 2007

What is the role of a daily newspaper?” This is the question posed to us in Paintings by Xiaoze Xie: Confrontation and Disruption, the second exhibition of Xie’s work at the Stanford in Washington Art Gallery. A newspaper, often skimmed in a hurry, discarded once consumed, may not immediately strike viewers as art, which is savored slowly, revisited time after time. But Xie transforms news into poetry as he blurs the lines between painter, writer, commentator, and critic. On his canvasses, Xie asks us to consider history and memory, archiving and forgetting, ideology and communication, transparency and transformation, chatter versus substance, fragment and whole. As the United States questions its ideological past and future, Stanford in Washington exhibits Xiaoze Xie’s works at a formative time and fitting place, in the nation’s capital.

November 21, 2012, Wenling, Zhejiang (Nail House No. 1), 2013
April-December 2008, G.Z.R.B. (Guangzhou Ri Bao), 2011
November-December 2008, L.T. (The London Times), 2010
August 26, 2013, I.H.T. (International Herald Tribune), 2014
August 22, 2013, D.Z. (Die Seit), 2014
December 4, 2012. I.H.T. (International Herald Tribune), 2014