Artist Studio Visit and Lunch - Xiaoze Xie

Xiaoze Xie is the Paul L. and Phyllis Wattis Professor of Art at Stanford University, where he has taught since 2009. The Guangdong born painter is a trained architect who embraced painting at an early age. The events at Tiananmen had a profound effect on his artistic vision while he was studying at the Central Academy of Arts in Beijing. In 1993 he came to the U.S. to study western art, which further impacted his evolving aesthetic.

Xie’s dynamic style merges still life painting with documentary photography, creating a unique photo-realism he uses to exploit the social and political potential of art. In his own words “I am by no means a revolutionary. I don’t want to give up painting for installation or video; I don’t want to give up the political for the cultural. I don’t want to give up my Chinese-ness for the universal; for me a good work of art should be able to generate complex layers of meaning.”

We will meet in his studio on the Stanford campus and after the visit will head to Ming’s Restaurant for a delicious dim sum lunch with the artist.