NARRATOR:
Untitled No. 3 is an oil painting created by Xie Nanxing in 2004. Measuring 2.2 metres in height and 3.9 metres in width, it spans the canvas like four doors laid side by side and stands as tall as a single door.
At the centre of the canvas is a brownish-black mass with protruding edges. It is surrounded on both sides and below by loose reddish-brown fibres, nearly obscuring the entire painting, with a swathe of light violet covering the top of the canvas. The edges and the fibres seem blurred, but they are actually a detailed, top-down view of a rooster’s comb.
Xie Nanxing avoided commercialising his work or repeating himself stylistically. These internal conflicts led him to reconnect with his original intention for painting, exploring the essence of images and the act of seeing. Using a cool colour palette, Xie enlarges the details of ordinary objects until the original forms are distorted, making them hard to recognise. Through visual exaggeration, he reveals the illusory nature of the perceptible world, while expressing his pain, despair, and desire to escape.
In this work, the enlarged rooster’s comb is unrecognisable, like an abstract painting. Its jagged edges resemble flames flickering towards the left. Soft reddish-brown feathers with fine white strands surround the angry-looking comb, extending across the canvas from the top right to the lower half. The feathers appear to stand and sway gently.
