Xie Lei (b. 1983; China) is a contemporary painter of personal conviction, channeling painting as a pathfinder towards a language capable of expressing his sensory universe. Approaching painting as a field of experimentation, Xie delves into the specificity of this medium in a contemporary world—discreet evocations from literary and cinematographic realms meld with a profound crucible of personal emotions to form phenomenological microcosms which dwell on the complex and ambiguous nature of existence.
Somber yet luminous, Xie’s use of colour in his fluid, textured touch imbues a sense of ethereality in tensioned compositions of a world in-between: sleep and death, torment and eroticism, between that which is tolerated, forbidden, left unspoken or ultimately transgressed. Like an endless dawn, to view his work is to transcend a threshold and submerge into uncertain and ambiguous realms, where time is gifted alternative painterly perception. In a salutary manner, Xie Lei enchants a slowing of the spectator’s gaze and offers an elusion from the intoxicating world of immediacy and constant acceleration.
Xie Lei’s work is included in many public and private collections, such as the Albertina Modern, the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami (ICA), the MACAM Lisboa and the Musée d’Art Contemporain du Val-de-Marne (MAC VAL) among others. He has been exhibited widely in Europa, the USA and China. Notable solo exhibitions were staged at Yishu 8 in Beijing, Galerie Anne de Villepoix Paris, Palais des Beaux-Arts Paris, Fondation Louis Vuitton Paris, Z Gallery Arts Vancouver and Sies + Höke Düsseldorf.
He was recently included in group shows at the Musée d’art moderne de Paris, the Boghossian Foundation in Brussels and the Museum Kampa in Prague. Significant group shows include the “Prix Marcel Duchamp 2025“ at the Musée d’art moderne de Paris, “Persona Grata” in MAC VAL and Musée national de l’histoire de l’immigration, Paris; “How To See [What Isn’t There]”, Langen Foundation, Neuss, Germany; “Collection David H. Brolliet – Geneva”, Fondation Fernet-Branca, Saint-Louis; “Memo II” at White Space, Beijing and “Ligne de Chance,” Fondation Ricard, Paris.
After graduating from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, he came to study at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and then received his PhD in visual arts in 2016 from École normal supérieure and Ecole nationale supérieure des beaux-arts in Paris. Lei lives and works in Paris and Madrid since 2006.
