Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Xingze Li. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Xingze, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Are you happier as a creative? Do you sometimes think about what it would be like to just have a regular job? Can you talk to us about how you think through these emotions?

I’m happy about the choice I have made to be an artist. But being an artist is perhaps not the best career to have if I want to stay happy. To me being an artist mostly is trying to solve all kinds of problems in the process of making art, and I am constantly concerned or worried if things go wrong or won’t turn out to be what I want. As an artist, I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist, particularly during the initial stages of conceiving the work.

Despite my contentment as an artist, I do wonder what my life would be like with a regular job. But the truth is I can hardly tell if I know anything about that version of me or if I have a preference.

Xingze, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I’m a visual artist currently based in Brooklyn. Born and raised in Yan’an, a small city in northern China, I came to New York about 7 years ago. I’d say I started my art career and truly felt like an artist after I got here, but I started painting and drawing and trained to be a representational painter long before that.

I became good at drawing in my childhood. My parents limited my cartoon-watching time to 15 minutes every week as my eyesight became very bad when I was still in kindergarten. I was dying to be part of those imagined lands and to become one of the characters. Drawing the characters over and over, almost desperately, was my way of memorizing and revisiting the fantasy world of cartoons I love. As I grew, painting and drawing was always my specialty at school and it made me feel less lonely. During my senior high school period, I had my best times when spending hours at the extracurricular art class every weekend. That was probably my first time experiencing what it feels like to be in a community.

Since being in college in Xi’an and then moving to Brooklyn, my art practice has shifted quite a lot. I chose the Oil Painting major in college because I was quite good at figurative painting in the extracurricular class during high school. When I got my first studio and bedroom in Brooklyn, facing those empty walls I lost interest in the kind of artwork I used to be passionate about. Yet I found myself spending a lot of time indoors observing the light and shadows on the wall as they offered me relief when I felt uncertain of my situation. I particularly enjoy looking through those light reflections and many overlapping layers on the wall surface and zoning out momentarily. Then the next spontaneous thing I did was trying to capture those moments with my phone camera. That initiated my new body of lens-based artwork that is directly affected by those spaces; often my home, studio, doorway, subway platform, or hotel room. I started making ethereal portraits based on those images I gathered, emphasizing how the mundane instants affect my existence when I am in front of them.

Currently, I use my cellphone camera as my primary device to capture images in generic indoor spaces. The images are printed on aluminum, which recreates a new sensory surface, blurring the sense of touch, proximity, and the experience of light and warmth. I then trim or reshape the image after it’s printed, so that the work becomes a two-dimensional miniature or a flat object with the sense of dimension, depth, and perspective of how it was being observed in the first place.

This process allows me to emphasize the sense of ambiguity and complexity of the wall surfaces I document. Although the original photograph serves as a template for the process, the way I treat the printed image and group the work will blur the boundary between reality and illusion, provoking the viewers to connect with what is often taken for granted. I hope that the work I create serves as a passageway for viewers into moments of reflection, enriching their day-to-day experience of the phenomenal world.

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative? Maybe you can provide some insight – you never know who might benefit from the enlightenment.

In 2020 I moved my studio into a building full of studios of artists and craft-makers, and since then I participated in the Gowanus Open Studios event annually. Many locals and art lovers would take a tour through art studios in the neighborhood and interact with the artists. In my studio, visitors often get very confused by what they see on the wall the moment they step into my studio. They would ask if the lens-based works on the wall are paintings, graphic designs, collages, or photos.

Honestly, I’m quite pleased to be asked this question. I used to struggle with this issue myself a lot, but eventually, I think it can be beautiful for art to be ambiguous and hard to define. I never intentionally turn my image into looking like something else. If you look closely and if you take time to check a few more pieces, the clue is right there within the works.

I was trained to be a painter that focused on figurative work of human, still life, and landscape. When it came to certain points I found that I was not able to present the subject matter well- details of common structures, very smooth yet textured surfaces, and the lights in domestic and semi-public spaces, with the painting brushes I have always used. That was when I first came to Brooklyn, spending a lot of time indoors observing the lights and colors on the wall. That let me relieved, and I wish that I could preserve those comforting moments. So I started taking photos of those surfaces and spaces with my phone without thinking about what to do with them next. And when I was making new work, I went back to those photos and found tremendous inspiration from them.

I went through phases of experimenting and developing work with different materials during my master’s degree in Brooklyn. I learned to use spray paint to create the smooth effect of light, use glass to reflect the glossy surface in everyday environments, use ceramics to make objects, and many other materials as alternatives to paint and brushes. I always have some photos as the reference for almost every single work. Then one day, as I browsed one of them on my phone, I thought, it looks so sensual and satisfying, and almost a visual art piece as is, why don’t I just print it out? So I did, and it became my first lens-based piece. I would glue the prints on wood panels and then spray clear coats with some textures, so they still look as if they are painted on the wood. As I kept making similar work, I found that printing on metal makes the image appear super slick and becomes the only focus as you barely notice the thickness of it, which completely changes the way the audience perceives the image, and almost lets the image become independent, versus the format of a printed image based on a solid surface. That way I was able to create vivid and subtle portraits of walls based on the images I gathered, emphasizing how they affected me when I was in front of them.

After about 5 years of using cellphone-taken images as part of my practice, I still consider myself a painter who just has stopped using brushes and paints, and never a photographer. I use the eyes and visual senses of a painter to capture and choose my language. I use lenses and printed photos as a way to create the work that I’d paint. I use flat surfaces to create work that assembles sculptural elements and the essence of an object. Hence, I embrace the complexity of this way of art making, and understand the confusion the audience had. I’m very glad that my work provoked conversations about the nature of it.

That’s the beauty of art. It’s multidisciplinary, it can be intense and ambiguous at the same time, and it makes you question whether it leans toward one specific side or not. That’s one of the sweetest things the artwork offers.

What’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative in your experience?

When I’m at my studio envisioning anything I want to create, I feel I have all the freedom. It’s not always as fun as it sounds, since my experience shapes me in a certain way so that I have specific goals for what to make. Still to have the openness of all the possibilities, is so precious and satisfying.

I consider myself still an early career artist, there is always the financial and physical restraint when I consider what to make. While being limited, having the ability and the need to create unconventionally is freeing.

Making the artwork, and solving endless problems in the process is always painful. I tend to spend a lot of time in front of my computer selecting and processing the images I will use for the upcoming project. It takes about 80% of my production time. Taking hours and hours to look at the digital screen without sensing the physicality of the completed work can be exhausting and boring. But after weeks and months of work, the moment when I know the piece is complete, seeing the image I imagined so many times now come alive, the reward is enormous.

I also love that I can create my own language being an artist, whether it’s a new way of using materials, challenging the boundary of a genre, or letting the work speak in silence.

It’s equally rewarding to find like-minded people, build friendships, and form a community with other artists. New York City is a great place for things to happen. And living here I’m constantly reminded all the time that human connection is always more important than the monetary reward or the degree of success we anticipate.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.xingzeli.com
• Instagram: @xing.ze
• Other: Email: [email protected]