10.Dec.2023
Art Daily

From the very outset, Ge Xiao’s practice has been informed by an almost phenomenological awareness. Her focus lies beyond the content depicted in the image; it resides in how the image is perceived and how meaning is slowly generated through the act of viewing. By around 2023, this orientation had become clearly discernible. She regards images and installations as containers of perception, within which she places those emotional residues that no narrative can fully capture. An Eastern mode of viewing is subtly introduced, not a direct gaze, but one that looks through, circumvents and dwells. The images often present a state of translucency, obscurity and incompleteness, as if the act of viewing itself were a form of deferred understanding.

In her work, she is particularly adept at handling the existence of ‘interstices’. These are less spatial voids, more temporal pauses, silences beyond language, and fissures within identity. She is in haste to mend these fissures into a complete narrative, but allows them to remain open, becoming spaces into which the viewer may enter. The rhythm of the moving images is deliberately slowed; the transitions between frames no longer seek fluidity, but instead present a pause and continuation akin to breathing. This state of impending expression is transformed by her into a unique visual grammar. Ge Xiao’s works often reveal emotions with greater authenticity precisely where language has failed to reach.

In her methodology, Ge Xiao frequently draws from concepts like negative space and borrowed scenery found in traditional East Asian aesthetics, moving beyond formal appropriation. She transforms these creative approaches into an emotional grammar specific to the digital medium. The boundaries of the image are blurred; there is often a subtle misalignment between sound and image; and a deliberately created gap is maintained between the viewer and the screen. Ge Xiao’s works are generally in no hurry to provide answers; instead, they allow the act of waiting itself to become a mode of viewing, enabling the viewer to find their own emotional resonance within those slowly moving images.