Xu Lei

signed in Chinese, executed in 2003, framed

Private Collection, China

Jiang Su, China, The First Fine-Brush Painting Exhibition of Jiang Su Province, 2004, Gold-prize winner

Illusion/Image Contemporary Chinese Ink Art Series 1, Hive Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China, 2013, p.101

This work is generally in good condition.
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Chance Encounter  - Xu Lei's Visual Allegory

Strong traces of traditional Renaissance elements can be found in Xu Lei’s Chance Encounter (Lot 43). Having formed a sentimental bond with Chinese materials, Xu has insisted on remaining loyal to Chinese paper and ink. Although Xu uses ancient Xuan writing paper, he leaves the familiar brush and calligraphic ink behind; rather, his focus is on layout and composition. Xu explains, “What attracts me isn’t how to paint, but rather how to arrange and manipulate images such that conceptual relationships and rhetorical relationships arise.” The tradition upon which he treads is that of Song dynasty painting, popular prior to the popularization of “literati painting”. For Xu, his inspiration comes from works such as Tang Xianzu’s The Peony Pavillion, Pu Songling’s Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio, as well as Ming and Qing dynasty prints discovered hidden among old, dusty stacks. The tradition of the Renaissance is, after all, essentially a process of re-discovery and creation.

At the same time, Xu employs surrealist techniques, particularly those of Magritte’s dream spaces, in creating his own world of images. “The inspiration behind my works is complex; coming partly from the intricacy of Persian arts, from large murals, from Duchamp’s emotionality, and from the influence of Yves Klein – not any work in particular, but from his fascination with the peculiar power of the void, of nothingness. As for Magritte, his influence on my work is not from surrealism, rather his adaptation of Foucault’s Order of Things in which he switches the “signified” with the “signifier” – it’s about parody, about rhetoric.”

Every object in Chance Encounter appears to be crafted exquisitely and meticulously with the refined artistic techniques of the Song dynasty. The viewer may observe the textural quality of the curtains and chairs, and can even make out the breath of the horse. As one of the most recurrent images in Xu’s works, the white horse poking its head out from behind the curtain in an almost deserted room, gazing at an empty Ming-style chair, also half-shrouded by curtains, and a single, lonesome high-heeled shoe. Here, the curtains serve not merely as a screen or separator, but their creases and folds also serve to communicate a further message: He explains, “Like a folding fan or oil-paper umbrella, the acts of ‘closing’ or ‘opening’ determine whether there is ‘substance’ or ‘lack of substance, or void.’”

The image Xu has created shatters the logic of nature. Applying alchemy upon a simultaneously “real and virtual” image, the artist has created an image-and-text-based allegorical space. The curtains, chair, horse, high-heeled shoe – placed in an enclosed, indoor space – become a personalized map legend, or like a black box theater performance. Everything seems to exist both in reality and  also in our imaginations as reality and illusion collide.

Permeating the entire image is a pale blue color scheme, magnifying the work’s atmosphere of nothingness, of estrangement, a manifestation of Bertolt Brecht’s concept of the “alienation effect.” Although the scene is realistic, the artist’s application of “estranging” techniques prohibits the viewer from becoming immersed in the work – rather, it forces the viewer to observe, to question, to conjecture, and to ponder. Ultimately, the viewer remains in a state of utter alienation and mystification in the face of this scene, pieced together only by familiar symbols from daily life, which appear curious and empty – their luxury only making the scene appear colder. This type of psychological alienation immediately shatters the logic of reality.

As one of Xu’s important, early works, Chance Encounters is the artist’s purification of an erotic scene. Xu accomplishes this by introducing what are effective elements in inhibiting lust, but his doing so does not result in a neutral cancelling out. The only partially visible, , well-groomed horse, wanders onto a scene of human dwelling, appearing from behind the curtain, approaching without hesitation the man-made objects of the chair and high-heeled shoe. Although the main subjects of the sexual narrative are absent, there still exists a narrative line, framed by the eroticism of the lone high-heeled shoe next to the chair and witnessed by the peeping eye of the horse. This languid, nightmarish scene thus becomes a metaphor for the emptiness left behind following the release of desire and passion. This work is a continuation of the artist’s personal language of bisection and separation, internal and external, tradition and modernity. Whether in the work’s composition or in the exploration of its form, the piece is filled with meticulous design yet appears entirely natural and effortless. Xu believes that art is not a question of technique, but a question of perspective, a question of “how the artist views the world.”