The publication accompanies Xie Nanxing’s first solo exhibition in London A Gift Like Kung Pao Chicken at Thomas Dane Gallery . The show’s satirical title, taken from a signature Chinese dish, is typical of an artist fascinated by codes and conventions while simultaneously shifting and upending their meaning. Drawing from his Chinese academic education and the Western artistic lexicon, Nanxing approaches painting with both an analytical and synthetical mind — posing riddles, yet solving them at the same time. In other words: the recipe, as much as the dish itself, matters equally to him.
This inquiry extends through both bodies of recent work on show in the two spaces: Spices (2016-2017), and a new series of portraits. In fact, these seemingly disparate series function similarly in how they expose and depict the process of acculturation as well as the acculturation itself.