Mengfan Xia

Born in China

 

 

Royal College of Art, London (2017-19) 英国皇家艺术学院绘画系硕士

 

 

 

 

Painting is like a recording machine that consists of many different processes, both visible and invisible. Some lines float on the surface, others hide under the density of pigment. In a sense, it is lines that produce an image in the space between surface and depth. Even when the lines are disconnected, they have a clear sense of direction, linking different areas together with lumps of colour, accumulating energy in the interior before spreading out and interweaving with one another. 

 

Painting is closer to trace the certainty of marks.  The development of a subject before the canvas is stained with pigments is highly unstable and complicated. This difference is that it is difficult to see from the outside world, but it can be felt. Content does not have a starting or an ending point, so there is no indexical certainty related to this. The traces recorded within paintings are mainly invisible, whereas lines, textures, or colours are the points that are visible but which also appear to cross over these differentiated realms, recording and recalling information made up of the intersection of trace and mark.