In his paintings, Xie Lei is able to strike a balance between the manifest and the latent, between intense moments of emotion and reflection. He reminds us that the invisible is indissociable from the visible, and at the same time, he takes away the idea of beauty and replaces it with the concept of the sublime.
Xie Lei (°1983, China) has been working and living in Paris since 2006. 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 obtained a PhD in visual arts in 2016 (ENS Paris - ENSBA Paris). His work is included in public and private collections such as MAC VAL and the Colas Foundation (France), the Burger Collection in Hong Kong, the X Museum in Beijing and the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary (TBA21) in Madrid. Xie Lei was a resident at Casa de Velázquez - L'Académie de France in Madrid in 2020-21 and in residence at the Boghossian Foundation in Brussels in 2022.