To the audience that has followed his creations, Xie Nanxing’s works have undergone significant changes since 2011. The most visible change relates to the problem that his new paintings pose, namely, how should they be viewed? Perhaps the problem can be expressed like this: How should the irregular “stains” of paint that appear on his canvases be understood? How can this artist’s decision be accepted when he lays bare an effect within the artwork but refuses to provide its source or origin? Xie Nanxing began to explore and design a number of methods of what he calls “camouflage paintings” or “escape-from-painting paintings” as early as 2005. What he did was take all of the skills and techniques that he had mastered and hid them, leaving behind only vestiges for the world to see. This strategy was not, however, one of lazy arrogance in assuming that mere remnants of his painting were enough to constitute a finished work. Instead, it came from an earnest belief that these residual marks truly constituted the work he was interested in making.
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