Between abstraction and figuration, Chinese artist Xie Lei's paintings seem to capture dreamlike atmospheres and figures in transit, about to appear or, on the other hand, in the instant before their disappearance. The bodies, echoes of memories and combinations of diverse images, are reduced to their essence and dissolve into corporeal materiality, revealed by the play of light characteristic of the artist's work. The effect of this transitory movement, of disappearance and/or appearance, is reinforced by the representation of bodies as spectres, shrouded in translucency and mystery.
Double I is a painting representative of Lei's approach to ambiguity and the representation of human states between two worlds. The two figures that emerge on the surface of the canvas, with undefined features and gender, seem to meet, back to back, in a downward movement. Simultaneously contemplative and enigmatic, these figures evoke the feeling of a recurring dream—flight and inevitable fall—functioning as a metaphor for the tension between fantasy and reality, recreating the sensation of vertigo. In this painting, as in several others by the artist, various shades of green, from the softest to the most vibrant, transform the work into a sensitive study of the human condition, desire, mortality, and the suspension between worlds or existential planes.

Carolina Quintela