86. XUANJUN KE: A SPACE BETWEEN SENSE AND NONSENSE.

‘…to create nonsense in the face of an absurd world allows me to be.’

X.K.

Xuanjun Ke

The water-colour world of Xuanjun Ke feels both familiar and obscure, like the states between consciousness and a place between childhood and beyond. A certain nostalgia for a time passed and a time still to arrive. The artist in emergence - discovering a world of their own - immersive - fragmented. As draw lines as threads connecting pages within a sketchbook or the rigging of a theater... A treasury mood in lucidity and calm, awaiting their next act.

Your drawings seem to communicate emotion with urgency. What do you feel when you create, and why do you choose to draw to express yourself?

I mostly work first from sketches. When I transfer them to a bigger surface I try and keep the energy… the rawest form of the idea. 

I like working with ink, watercolour and acrylic because they’re quick to dry and produce unexpected results, as well as their ability to be layered and create depth.

I loved to see your mural works, the shared sense of working as a collective feels very important to you, please can you contemplate this within your practice as a whole?

The involvement of a sense of community in my works are very much a reflection of my life. I treasure my collaborators and fellow artists and want to involve them in my work, whether that’s recording bits of conversations we had or have their accidental and/or planned creative inputs in my works. The artwork then carries meaning for me and is of personal importance. When the audience view my work, they can have their own interpretations. I usually disassociate myself from putting meanings onto my work.

Xuanjun Ke

Sustaining elements of childhood feels very pronounced in alot of work I am seeing at the moment, do you feel this about your own practice and if so why do you feel this is the case?

There are a lot of artists that I was exposed to in childhood who inspired me, sometimes whether I’m conscious of it or not. I was heavily influenced by artists like Tove Jansson, Jimmy Liao (Taiwanese children’s book author & illustrator), Polish animations of classical music (Studio Filmów Animowanych, Poznań), the animated children’s series “The Little Mole” (Czech Cartoon, 1957-2002) and other Eastern European Cartoons from Soviet times that came into China around the time I was a child, my parents also took me to lots of ballet theatre productions as a child, possibly adding the influences of theatrical and dramatic flares to my works. The media I was consuming all have a strong characteristic of storytelling, traditional media and beautiful illustrations that inspired me to recreate my own experiences in life through the media of storytelling and illustrated adventures. I’m also very drawn to nostalgic times and old things, they have a beauty that the modern world is not actively reproducing, such as music from the 1920s-90s jazz, blues, rock n roll, metal, 80s electronic synth, etc, paintings, traditional mediums, physical installations and works of Dada and the surrealists. I prioritize physical making methods and connections, they are what grounds me in reality, the things we can touch and feel give a more visceral and holistic experience to my daily life. The childhood element you described probably stems from a longing for nostalgic things and the hope to create new memories that are impressionable, fresh and unique.

I recognised the sense of your work being like fragments that feel connected somehow to a larger source, an ongoing story, your drawings seen out of context feel as fallen pages from a single series of illustrations, a single narrative, do you feel this and if so what do you feel the story as a whole is telling you?

My creative process stems from my sketches/sketchbooks, which come from my daily experiences and trains of thoughts, they [the sketches] present themselves in the way that thoughts do, jumbled and fragmented, as memories do when we try and recall them, the fragmented pieces of smell, touch, vision, people, sound, taste and conversations string themselves loosely in our minds to form a picture that we define as memories. They are a defined form yet can take any shape you like, mixed with imagination and environmental influences to become something. The story as a whole are just my reflections upon my own experiences, my personal truths.

When you mix media in your work, like a collage of intangible elements, a fascinating exchange takes place, an atmosphere. Can you express what you feel within that created space?

I feel I can just be, without having to be someone, be something or have the potential to create meanings, collage creates a space for me to feel adrift in the chaos… when I am in the chaotic world where most things don’t necessarily make sense, to create nonsense in the face of an absurd world allows me to be.

Xuanjun Ke, ‘Sketch No.1’, 24hr Artist Residency with Arcade Campfa at Spit & Sawdust Skatepark, Cardiff. Charcoal on newsprint paper, Sep. 2023, 42 × 59.4 cm.

A series of works by Xuanjun Ke were presented as a part of the exhibition ‘From The One To The Many’, Saatchi Gallery, London, September 2024.