The body and portraits have long been important motifs in XIE Qi’s painting, appearing throughout her various creative periods. Drawing on a sweeping imagination and rich perceptions, Xie Qi bestows on these shifting figures the warmth of emotion, the tension of desire, and tones of gloom. She sources her subjects of depiction from friends, everyday objects (portrait-bearing banknotes, plants resembling human organs), candid photographs and classic themes, capturing and depicting them in an approach akin to “psychological profiling”—the artist refines the components of the image through observation and perception, adding or removing details, destroying and reconstituting whole forms, restoring the figure to magnify parts and moments filled with dramatic tension. Xie Qi’s depiction takes place between recollection and creation. The concealed brushstrokes, blurred boundaries and phantom colors of the pictures often radiate with a mysterious air from a past time.

Gallery address: 807, K11 Atelier Victoria Dockside, 18 Salisbury Road, Tsim Sha Tsui