Xiao-yang Li in conversation with Sacha Craddock

About

narrative projects is pleased to host Xiao-yang Li in conversation with Sacha Craddock. The event coincides with Li's current solo exhibition at the gallery - Cultivated Chaos.

Xiao-yang Li’s recent paintings carry a host of reference and association. A composite of graphic ability, exuberant colour, and painterly happenstance creates a particular approach to two and sometimes three-dimensional work that is both familiar and unique. Li studied graphic design, film-making and photography in both Beijing & London. Later, in London, when looking at work by Francis Bacon and Frank Auerbach, for instance, she had a change of heart and decided to study painting. A love for late Titian, or Piero Della Francesca, a constant love of Oskar Schlemmer for exactly the opposite and the same reasons represents the perennial painter’s pull between the painterly and graphic. Perhaps even more crucially, Li looks to Picabia, for ‘the way he keeps changing’ his transgressive graphic approach, painted modelling, and ability to influence and shape an anti-directional, formal advance in Modernism. [from the exhibition text by Craddock]

Xiao-yang Li (b. 1985, Harbin, China. Lives and works in London.) Her most recent exhibitions and awards include: The night above the dingle starry, Museo Leonora Carrington, San Luis Potosi, (2019); Totem Index, narrative projects, London (2017); A Splinter in the Sun, curated by Tim Stoner, narrative projects, London (2016); Next Generation, from Ruth Borchard Collection, Piano Nobile Kings Place, London (2016); Heads, curated by Vera Portatadino, Yellow artist run space, Varese (2015); Bloomberg New Contemporaries, touring exhibition: ICA (Institute of Contemporary Art) London, Newlyn Art Gallery, World Museum, Liverpool (2014-2015); Finalist at Dentons Art Prize, Dentons London (2016); Fellow (stipend), Vermont Studio Residency, USA (2016).

Sacha Craddock is an independent art critic, writer and curator based in London. She studied painting at Central Saint Martins followed by a post-graduate painting degree at Chelsea School of Art before going on to write criticism for The Guardian and The Times. She has been Chair of the Board of New Contemporaries and selection process since 1996. Craddock co-founded Art school Palestine and is co-founder and member of Faculty at British School at Rome, Trustee of the Shelagh Cluett Trust, Trustee of the Art House Foundation and Executive Committee Member of the International Association of Art Critics AICA.
Craddock has judged many art prizes, such as the Turner Prize in 1999 and the John Moores Painting Prize in 2008. She is currently working on a publication about the changing attitudes to contemporary art in Britain, commissioned by Reaktion Books.

Doors and drinks: 6pm
Conversation: 6.30pm