Beijing Commune is pleased to present Xie Molin's solo exhibition "White," opening on 15 Mar 2025. The exhibition features the artist’s latest series of eight acrylic works in white employing his signature machine-painting approach. The stark white lays bare the similarities and differences, progressions and contradictions, illuminating Xie's deeper exploration and understanding of reality through his distinctive artistic methodology.
Since his first self-made three-axis painting machine inspired by cutting plotters, Xie has dedicated himself to re-approaching painting through the act of "making." Often in his work, the image embodies an intricate interplay between artist, machine, and canvas through Xie’s intuitive engagement with form. In “White,” however, unified in dimensions and color–the color of the probably purist form, the group of eight paintings spotlight a series of progressive transformations that advance to the breathtaking proximity between the paralleling vertical lines, approaching the limits of the relationship between the rigid machine and the fluid paint.
The core of this series lies in the eternal conflicts and paradox within the ways of constructing and knowing “the objective.” For Xie, "white" is a symbol of inherent paradox: "There is no absolute white; white always entangles with black." Under varying light and angles, the paintings in white exhibit starkly contrasting visual effects: when moving around the pieces, the interplay of horizontal and vertical lines creates opposing light-dark relationships seen from two different sides; while at certain stances, the square in the square canvas together with the intricate details vanish, rendering the canvas seemingly empty. Somewhere between material white and shifting shadow, complex weaving and minimalist forms, and digital simulation and sublime light shimmers Xie’s evocative read on the natural duality in Tao Te Ching and Zhuangzi: "When yang reaches its limit, it becomes yin; when yin reaches its limit, it becomes yang.” [1]
[1] translated by Wing-Tsit Chan in A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1963), 160.
