Nicholas Metivier Gallery is pleased to present the Canadian premiere of paitings by Xiaoze Xie. Since 1998 his canvases have depicted stacks of newspapers from around the world and after September 2001, reflect the jarring shift towards increasingly violent imagery and a sense of urgency in the media. In his paintings we see images and sentences fragmented, abbreviated, and distorted as a visual effect of piling newspapers in a heap, and as a comment on the nature of media itself. His playful command of complex subject matter, which touches on numerous ideas including stratification and accumulation, result in powerful and highly original works. As a final endearment they are beautifully painted with an incredible array of sensuous brush strokes and bits of bright, rich colour enlivening the monotony of grays.
Xiaoze Xie emigrated from Beijing, China to the United States in 1993, receiving an MFA from the University of North Texas in 1996. He was recipient of the Pollock-Krasner award in 2003, is represented by Charles Cowles Gallery in New York and currently teaches at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania.