In his work, artist Xiaoze Xie deals with the vulnerability of historical memory and superficiality of perception in the media age. (PHOTO: Stanford University, used with permission). In his latest exhibition, “Confrontation and Disruption,” Chinese American artist Xiaoze Xie invites his audience to explore a fresh reading of time and memory mixed with a powerful reflection on global concerns. Xie tackles street confrontations with the police, refugees, violence and war, and issues of resistance and empathy. His fascination with books and newspapers, a dominant current in his work over more than two decades, is a commanding force in this latest exhibition, highlighting his creative process as an observer of the human condition. He has remained loyal to these themes in spite of their being a challenging sell in the global art market, where collectors and even galleries sometimes define or direct artists’ growth and success. During a recent interview with me in Brooklyn, Xie told me that “to consistently explore a theme, you will be able to go deeper, and you will also be able to expand the scope of the theme.” Xie’s focus on newspapers and books has nothing to do with the “decline of print media,” but he acknowledges that the “rise of digital media and the internet” has brought “a kind of urgency” and “a different kind of relevancy” to his work. Regarding the large size and scale of his paintings, Xie explains that by painting books and newspapers much bigger than they actually are “they gain a kind of presence and unfamiliarity than when you are used to deal with books or newspapers, something very small in real life, you look at the monumental representation of those trivial daily objects.” Born in China in 1966, Xie is the Paul L. and Phyllis Wattis Professor of Art at Stanford University. In the interview excerpted below, I asked him about his creative process, teaching art at Stanford, the subjects of his works, his technique, political art in China and his relationship with his audience. It includes three groups of works. One group is paintings from a recent series of newspapers called “Both Sides Now.” Each painting is based on a section of a found sheet of newspaper, an existing issue. The painting looks like the texts and images on the backside of the newspapers have bled over to the front. If you turn over the pages of a newspaper against the light, sometimes you see the backside of it. Or, if you hold it against the window, you see the text and images of the backside of the paper overlap with the ones on the front. Creating a kind of overlapping, almost confusing effect. Or at least the images and texts from the backside disrupt the ones on the front. From February 3, 2007, L.G.D.S. No. 1”(La Gazzetta dello Sport). 2007, oil on canvas, 60 x 50 inches, Artist Studio at Stanford. Here Xie presents the confrontation of soccer fans with riot police at night during a game in Italy in 2007. (Used with permission). It creates a dense layer of information that sometimes relates to, sometimes contradicts with and sometimes interrupts each other. That’s where the title comes from. I also present six large paintings from the series, including images of illegal immigrants from North Africa during rescue efforts, and also, images of confrontations with the police in two different newspapers. One of the images depicts the confrontation of soccer fans with riot police at night during a game in Italy in 2007. Soccer fans throw rocks at the riot police and their armed vehicles. The scene is somehow fleeting and ambiguous. You get this idea of confrontation and violence but you don’t really specifically know what was the cause. Was it political? For me, it’s more of a symbolic image of confronting the authority, the clash between the ordinary people and the police, not unlike the famous Time Magazine’s photo of a Chinese student in front of the tanks. “August 26, 2013, I.H.T (International Herald Tribune)” 2014, oil and acrylic on canvas, 60 x 64 inches. (Talley Dunn Gallery, Dallas. Used with permission). By using the word “confrontation,” I’m trying to indicate a general kind of attitude, non-acceptance, resistance and struggle. The other painting, “August 26, 2013, International Herald Tribune,” was based on a news photo of riot police confronted by demonstrators in Bangkok, Thailand, when the police confronted them. There is a close-up of the riot police with their shields and helmets, and it is a very impersonalized image that feels very cold and machine-like. On the shields, they are writings that demonstrators drew with markers on the transparent part of the shields. And they say, ‘Civil War is coming,’ ‘There was injustice,’ ‘parliament is not justice’—from this work you get a sense of what is going on.