Numéro N°206 – Septembre 2019

English text

Xinyi Chen,

Clément

(2019). Galerie Balice Hertling, Paris. Photo Aurélien Mole

Interview by Nicolas Trembley

I paint people I know because I like

their faces or how they talk and how

their gestures tell stories. There are

women in my recent paintings.

Do you work with archival images

and found footage in your prac-

tice? Is the question of appropri-

ation a valid subject for you?

I paint mostly from photos that I took

myself – I then put the parts together.

There are also a few references to

classic paintings in my work.

How do you install your work? Is

the manner of display in your exhi-

bitions important as a vehicle for

your message and, if so, how is it

articulated in the installations?

For me, most of the work happens in

the studio, where I really focus on

each painting. Installation is some-

thing I leave to curators and special-

ists – I just usually check the light at

the end.

You were just awarded the Baloise

Art Prize at Art Basel. What was

your winning project?

I showed 12 paintings I made in the

last 12 months, depicting people

I met this year or previous encounters

that still resonate with me.

Why did you choose to live in

Paris? How do you perceive the

art scene here?

I love Paris, it is a very metropolitan

city, yet leaves you a lot of space and

time, which is great for my way of

working. I also love going to the mu-

seums here, I’m essentially charmed

by the city. Paris has a very interest-

ing art scene, but that can also be

said of many other types of scene

here, thankfully!

What’s your daily routine in Paris?

I get up late, I go to my studio around

noon, and then I work till 9.00 or

10.00 pm, or later if I can’t figure

something out.

Is there anything you would like to

make people conscious of through

your art?

I don’t really feel I’ve got enough dis-

tance from my art to reply consciously

to this question – but I know for sure

I want people to be emotionally over-

whelmed and sometimes confused

by their feelings and encounters.

What’s you next project?

I have a solo exhibition coming up at

the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin

next year.

real breakthrough happened when

I moved to Baltimore and found my

language and subject for painting.

Do you remember your first

encounter with art? What do you

think it was that made you want to

be an artist?

I don’t really remember it being a de-

cision; I started painting when I was

a kid, and the whole suite of events

that followed felt logical and natural

to me. I don’t really remember having

an epiphany or an encounter with art,

but I do have a clear childhood mem-

ory of a catalogue from a Van Gogh

exhibition I really liked. The catalogue

really made me want to play with the

paint – I actually still feel the same

impulse when looking at a work of art

I really like in a museum.

What were you looking at then and

what are you looking at today?

I was a big fan of Impressionism till

I was 18 – now I’ve kind of grown out

of it. Since I live in Paris, I just look at

everything in the museums, and not

only paintings. I also feel I’ve been

quite marked by reading Francis

Bacon: The Logic of Sensation by

Gilles Deleuze.

Do you feel connected to a com-

munity or movement?

I love hanging out with my artist

friends. But a lot of what I do happens

in the studio, which is for me a very

personal space.

You seem very comfortable in

paint, but sometimes you use

other media, like photography.

And what about your palette?

I wouldn’t say I’m really comfortable

with painting – I just love the paint,

I think it is a very sensitive and pow-

erful medium. It takes a lot of planning

but also a lot of accidents. I started

taking a lot of photos when I started

to paint a lot. At the beginning the

photos were just references for my

paintings, but then I think they be-

came something on their own and

I wanted to explore that. There are

photos that I kept going back to and

looking at, and I did not want to paint

them, and then I realized they are

photos in their own right. Where col-

our is concerned, I want it to be

pleasing and slightly disturbing at the

same time – so that it triggers a spe-

cific moment with feelings.

What are the sources for your

paintings? Do you know the peo-

ple you paint? And why only men?

Artists have long adored Paris, a
city whose museums and heritage
have been a constant source of inspi-
ration for every generation of painters.
Young Chinese artist Xinyi Cheng
came to live here for precisely these
reasons, even if she doesn’t neces-
sarily feel comfortable with the art of
painting which she practises every
day. Her pictures are the echo of en-
counters she makes in the French
capital, mostly young men, in daily
and sometimes banal situations, but
often loaded with sensuality. Her por-
traits, with their soft lighting and de-
ceptively simple contours, won her
this year’s Baloise Art Prize (30,000
Swiss francs awarded to the laureate
by Bâloise Assurances) for her solo

show at Balice Hertling during the last

Art Basel. Moreover Bâloise

Assurances, which has acquired sev-

eral of her pieces, will be donating

them to the Neue Nationalgalerie in

Berlin and the MUDAM (Musée d’Art

moderne Grand-Duc Jean) in

Luxembourg. Numéro caught up with

Cheng in her Belleville studio.

NUMÉRO: What’s your background?

XINYI CHENG: I was born in Wuhan

and grew up in Beijing. I went to art

school there and studied sculpture.

These years were really formative for

me, because I had to do a lot of figu-

rative clay sculptures, a practice

which still helps me today in my ap-

proach to painting bodies. But the

292

Art

ARTIST OF THE MONTH

XINYI CHENG

It’s in Paris’s lively Belleville quarter

that the Chinese artist has set up

shop, where she paints the sensual

portraits which won her this year’s

Baloise Art Prize at Art Basel.