Xinyi Cheng, For A Light II, 2020
Xinyi Cheng, winner of the 2019 Baloise Art Prize, painted much of what is currently on view at Berlin’s Hamburger Banhof last spring, during France’s first Covid-induced lockdown. Her intimate-yet-detached gaze, previously applied to male figures in ambiguous encounters, is here trained on moments of solitude among men, women, and animals. The Horse with Eye Blinders—an enigmatic double portrait of a chestnut mare clad in red cap, ear hoods, and blinders and a young man with his arms folded across his bare chest—gives this exhibition its title. Born in Wuhan and raised in Beijing, Cheng is now based in Paris, where we spoke in her Belleville studio. Behind the artist’s desk hangs a painting Cheng’s mother made to bring good luck: “It’s a tree that I can lean on, a bridge and stairs that I can go up,” she said. “I bring it everywhere I go.”
Read my Interview with Xinyi Cheng on Artforum.com.
