Xixi Li’s Next Chapter in Taipei: growing characters and landscapes with expressions
Soka Art Taipei presents adult-like proportions, earlier characters in pink clouds and expressive green hills through December 5. Familiar figures acquire more complex emotions.
Can the endearing figures that repeatedly inhabit a painting grow up? In Next Chapter at Soka Art Taipei, Xixi Li places that change within proportions, expressions and landscapes. Running October 24–December 5, the exhibition retains a familiar character language while making bodies more adult-like and emotions less exclusively innocent. For viewers interested in character painting or illustration-like storytelling, the relationship between figures and backgrounds offers a starting point beyond choosing the most appealing character.
Back to school, and another stage for the figures
Born in 1989, Li graduated from Iowa State University in 2012 and is currently pursuing an MFA in Fine Arts at New York’s School of Visual Arts. Returning to student life provides a context for moving beyond established working methods. Next Chapter therefore refers to shifts in both art and life: familiar forms can remain while painting methods, colors and the characters’ psychological states continue to develop.
Simplified forms, distinctive faces and interactions with objects make her figures recognizable. Beneath a soft exterior, they retain stubbornness, hesitation or quiet refusal to give way. Those feelings need not rely on dramatic expressions; they can reside in the direction of a gaze, a mouth or bodily proportions. As the figures become more than uncomplicated cute images, viewers can compare how the same facial vocabulary accommodates more complex feelings.
Looking back through pink clouds, hiding in green hills
Don’t forget to Imagine places a more adult-looking figure in the foreground, calmly facing the viewer with hair spreading beside the face. Different characters from earlier paintings float in pink clouds above. Old and new forms coexist, making growth less a severing of the past than a continuation accompanied by earlier imaginings. The English words within the painting are part of the work, joining the cloud-borne figures in considering how imagination accompanies artistic practice.
Don’t forget to Imagine juxtaposes a foreground figure with earlier characters in pink clouds.
In another painting of a green valley, trees and hills acquire eyes and expressions, while figures hide in the landscape or emerge as enlarged faces. The background becomes a world with emotions of its own rather than empty scenery supporting a character. Varied greens, paths and houses carry the eye backward and forward; shifts in scale give a familiar pastoral scene an improbable humor. Look first for the figures, then for surrounding forms that seem to look back.
Brushwork and light speak beyond the characters
Hidden in the Landscape 260927 sets a figure in a pink rabbit suit within scenery evocative of ink painting. A small bird rolls its eyes atop the figure’s head, while pale orange clouds and water establish another palette. That ink-painting association is visual, not proof that ink is the material. Li juxtaposes simplified faces with looser background brushwork, bringing the character forward while light, color and atmosphere carry unspoken feelings.
Work by Xixi Li: a figure in a pink animal suit holds a toy and a blue object.Hidden in the Landscape 260927 places a rabbit-suited figure and a small bird in a watery landscape.
The exhibition is at Soka Art Taipei, No. 350, Section 2, Tiding Avenue, Zhongshan District, Taipei. Hours are Tuesday–Saturday, 10:00–19:00, closed Sundays and Mondays. Taipei Art Week’s event page lists free admission. The gallery gives October 24 as the official start; the opening has passed and regular visits are now available. Read Soka Art’s official introduction, then compare figures and landscapes in the gallery to see whether signs of growth reside in a face or the whole composition.
