French-Chinese painter Xie Lei traffics in the spectral—figures that hover between presence and dissolution, desire and negation. Holding a doctorate from the Beaux-Arts in Paris, Xie focuses his practice in oil painting on a rigorous philosophical inquiry into the nature of hauntology and presence through absence. His vague, ethereal silhouettes—eyes closed, bodies falling or levitating in indeterminate space, and always painted from memory or imagination—emerge from a figurative process as much about suspension as portrayal. Working with phosphorescent blues, ochres, and Sèvres greens, Xie imbues his chiaroscuro figures with a luminosity that appears to radiate from the deepest underlayers of their surfaces. He draws on influences as varied as early Spanish Romanticism, Tuymans’ conceptual painting, medieval arts, and philosophical traditions of contemplation in his work, creating paintings that purposefully dwell in ambiguity and resist easy interpretation. Atmospheric and unresolved, Xie’s images enact what the artist calls an “alternative perception of time,” a deceleration and imagic unfurling that ushers viewers into the expanded realm of his work.
Xie Lei (b. 1983, Huianan, China) has lived and worked in Paris since 2006. He graduated from the CAFA in Beijing then the ENSBA in Paris. His works have been exhibited in numerous institutions: Musée d’art Moderne, Paris; Louis Vuitton Foundation, Paris; Bibliothèque nationale de France; The Warehouse, Dallas; MO.CO, Montpellier; CAPC, Bordeaux; Villa Noailles, Hyères; Collection Lambert, Avignon; MAC VAL, Vitry-sur-Seine; Langen Foundation, Neuss; Musée National d’Histoire d’Immigration, Paris; Ricard Foundation, Paris. His work is held in many institutional collections such as the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, MAC VAL, Albertina Museum, Frac des Pays de la Loire, MARKK and X Museum. Xie was resident at the Casa de Velázquez, Madrid and at the Villa Medici, Roma. He is the recipient of the 2025 Marcel Duchamp Prize.
