The Topography of Disappearance. Xie Nanxing’s Painting Series untitled, 2006 at the Documenta 12 ( de )
Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing-Lucerne, 2007-05
"If there were no light in my paintings, they’d be completely useless."
(Xie Nanxing)
The national and local background of Xie Nanxing (born in Chongqing/China in 1970) is quite irrelevant when one is faced with his oil-on-canvas paintings. Neither in his technique nor in his subjects does Xie Nanxing make any reference to the everyday realities in the Beijing metropolis surrounding him. Ever since 1999, this artist’s work rather documents his increasing retreat into abstract imagery. At the same time—which seems paradoxical—the allusion to the tangible topic of his work remains quite preserved, so that one might almost speak of a "topography of disappearance".
The three pieces by Xie Nanxing shown at Documenta 12—all without a title—constitute a completed series. When asked about the subject of these paintings, Xie Nanxing’s answer will immediately touch upon his specific mode of operation: by the mediation of different media levels (drawing, film, photography, inclusion of paper objects, etc.), the artist arrives at the visual realization of his ideas in painting. Drawings, but also the new media, perform something like a mind-mapping function.
"In my series untitled, 2006 I was concerned with an imaginary place that as such already evokes the various dimensions of danger and terror but at the same time seductiveness, lust, erotic elements and a certain yearning. In this way I arrived at the decision to use the leitmotif of a virtual garden at night. Of course, I don’t associate any concrete idea of a specific garden—the image is more a psychological parable, a metaphor for the dark visions of our imagination."
Xie Nanxing calls himself an impatient artist. Thus even during the very first steps of realizing untitled 1, 2006 he abandons the plan of capturing a nocturnal nature scene in the drawing mode.
"The idea of trees, plants etc. dissatisfied me right from the start. So I simply blackened a canvas and filmed this surface with a video camera, trying to achieve varying shades and color nuances by changing the lighting and the recording perspective. This dark film I then screened on a TV to make photos, and from the stills I chose the one that touched me the most. And this became the ‘master’ for untitled 1, 2006."
It was the unexpected, the startling and the incalculable that had been most important to him in this series, Xie Nanxing explains. Recounting how the three paintings developed, he himself seems most surprised at what can actually be seen on the canvas in the end.
"The photographs suddenly showed structures which made me think of grass, plants and trees. I then transferred this shadowy black square from the selected photo in several layers onto the canvas, bringing out certain components and spatial aspects more distinctly. For a concrete detail, and as a source of light, I had the idea with the warning lamp. Not only does the material meaning of the object make you think of dangerous situations but the red light would also flash hectically at the surroundings."
Untitled 1, 2006 gets finished after several months but Xie Nanxing is not satisfied with the result and sets to work on a second version. He calls this explorative movement a process of achieving concreteness. However, when the "highest level of concretion" (Xie Nanxing) is reached—and here the series untitled, 2006 forms a consistent continuation of his previous works—the viewer hardly finds any indication of what might have been the original topic for the artist any more. The possibility of creating such a reference ex post by adding a title is roundly rejected by Xie Nanxing: "When the pictures are finished I no longer want them to have any feedback to my intention. So probably every viewer will see something else, and this is quite in line with my ideas."
After Xie Nanxing considers this first piece as finished, untitled 2, 2006 and untitled 3, 2006 take form on the basis of a vague sketch. With just a few strokes made directly on the canvas and later elaborated on, the viewer of untitled 2, 2006 is transported to a clearing sparsely populated with trees. The undergrowth which remains unclear—or is it a meadow?—is illuminated by a cold greenish diffuse light. Otherwise this painting is kept in black and grayish hues as well. As through some night vision equipment, the viewer stares into this inhospitable setting. The sense of unease is further accentuated by the three small light spheres in the top half of the painting, with a fourth crescent-shaped illuminated body glowing somewhat below them in the depth of darkness. If you move in front of the painting, several indeterminable shadowy shapes can be made out at the center from certain perspective (and when the lighting is superior).
"I was thinking of birds, and of birds’ eyes, peeking out of the darkness. At first I even had birds folded out of paper and pasted them to the canvas; but then I discarded this version of the painting. And about those bent, tree-like dim growths—well, they do have something phallic about them, of course, alluding to the erotic component of a nocturnal outdoor scene."
In untitled 3, 2006 the gray and drab of the night entirely dominates the atmosphere of the painting. Only the plants in the immediate foreground are illuminated by a cone of light remindful of a pocket lamp. The main idea in this piece for Xie Nanxing was the inadvertent encounter of a peacock and a cat at night. "When I was a child, we would often make peacocks of dried grass leaves. At the center of the picture, there is one such shape, just vaguely discernible. As for the cat—I admit it’s really hard to make out—it is here, on the left, by the human shadow", Xie Nanxing explains, standing in front of his work. "The main incident in this painting was no doubt the moment when the room lighting outlined my own shadow on the canvas." Now this shadow has been immortalized in the art.
Working with superimposed layers of script or paint—whether these are of a concrete nature or located in the realm of consciousness—finds its most concentrated expression in the concept of palimpsest. Originally designating a scientific method for retracing remainders of a text on a stone slab or a piece of parchment that had been almost completely scraped down and make it legible again, the palimpsest in the 20th century has become the central metaphor of several different genres. In literature, philosophy and the fine arts it is used to point out the conflicting fields of the forgotten, the unconscious, the repressed, the overwritten which is no longer visible on the one hand, and breaking news, conscious content, rewritings or, in the art context, overpaintings on the other. Cy Twombly is considered one of the most renowned visual artists who works with this technique. Like Twombly, Xie Nanxing becomes an actor at several levels of time and the corresponding layers of his painting, taking the role of being his own dialogue partner and the observer of his own work in progress. It is the objective of his oeuvre to shed light upon the darkness of his unconscious and only allusively accessible imagery. The artist’s visual resources form the primary layer of the palimpsest which is to be ‘uncovered’ during the creative process. Further image layers are produced when the artist uses, for instance, the techniques of film and photography that he releases from his own command, abandoning to them the entire direction over the visual results. The role of contemporary technology here at first seems quite different from that of the modern palimpsest researcher who makes use of sophisticated x-ray equipment to bring out the superimposed texts or images. From the point of view of content, however, both working methods are quite comparable. The idea is to make perceptible to the eye what in fact has been superimposed or, metaphorically speaking, what is shrouded in darkness. But while for the palimpsestologists the various layers are more like obstacles to be overcome, for Xie Nanxing the images of the photo, the film stills and the layers of paint on the canvas serve the purpose of transforming the actual ultimate ground, the image which up to that time was merely conjectured into a visible one. That this is not a linear process but destined to forever remain an approximation goes by itself.
Translation: Werner Richter
First published by: Galerie Urs Meile, Beijing-Lucerne
