The dice roll. We are brought to a state of waiting. Confronted by Xie Nanxing’s paintings, the beholder must solve a puzzle: the colorful speckles on the canvas seem to assume a shapeless form, a specter haunting both the beholder and the space.
The dice land on an ordinary number. After attentive observation, the beholder finally recognizes the subject depicted by means of many colorful dots. Lying on the right-hand side of What to Exhibit No. 1 is a kettle in the shape of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Trivial and cheesy, it easily makes the beholder laugh.
At first glance, the painting seems to be a puzzle that obscures and mystifies, yet the answer is in plain sight. The process of solving this puzzle is so absurd that one can’t help but associate Xie’s works with Dadaism. In What to Exhibit No. 1, the floating ghost-like figures are a group of elderly women chatting outdoors, with fans in their hands. In No. 3, a collection of dolls from Yiwu markets are lined up in front of the elevator of the exhibition hall. The Seven Portraits series depicts seven close friends of the artist, with colors and details implying their respective personalities. Xie uses a technique called “leaking” to disseminate colorful speckles to form his paintings. Leaking is used by the artist to produce incomprehensible images, realized by covering one canvas with another, painting on the outer canvas, and allowing the paint to seep through onto the inner canvas. Leaking is a bit reminiscent of the “rayograph” technique invented by American Dadaist photographer Man Ray. Without a camera, Man Ray would obtain a photo by placing objects such as thumbtacks and coil of wire directly on a sheet of photosensitive paper and exposing it to light. By using these nonhuman elements, the outcome is an image where it is difficult to recognize any concrete objects. Even if the beholder is well aware of the artist’s approach, such a process and its resultant product remain largely nonsensical, nonetheless.
A second connection point between Dada and Xie Nanxing can be found in the title of the exhibition, A Roll of the Dice, which represents the artist’s reflection on the concept of chance and randomness. An French word for “chance,” aléa, derives from the Latin alea, which originally meant “dice” or “accident.” It is said that when Julius Caesar led his army across the Rubicon river during his long civil war against Pompey, he declared, “Alea iacta est” (the dice has been cast). Centuries later, Dadaists began to consider chance a productive artistic method: Hans Arp created his collages according to the law of chance, André Breton invented the methodologies of écriture automatique (automatic writing) and hasard objectif (objective chance), while Marcel Duchamp strove to “preserve” (mettre en conserve) chance in his art. Unsurprisingly, with its emphasis on randomness and uncontrollability, Dadaism also sees a revolutionary or subversive potential in chance.
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