Xie Lei & Leyla Aydoslu both investigate the limits of human body though lightness & weight, grace & gravity in this first exhibition at Sally's Fault in Amsterdam.

In Xie’s paintings the body is represented through portraiture with blurred and unrecognizable features. In his previous work, the expressions chronicle liminal states such as the invisible difference between sleep & death, or pain & orgasm. These limits of consciousness define the emphatic visages of Xie’s figures.

In the Thriver series seen here, the body is repeated in a symbolic form — a downturned head looks towards upturned hands. In the hands, a ball of energy or flame-like form is exposed. The painterly brushstrokes evoke a spiritual energy within the landscape referencing invisible weights and centers of gravity that we all carry within.

In Leyla Aydoslu’s sculptures, material is attached and collaged, forming weighty pillars. Stretching horizontally or vertically, the works are made up to the extremes of Aydoslu’s own body, limited by the reach of her arms, and the edges of her capabilities to physically manipulate material. These forms pushed to Aydoslu’s limits mirror the liminality of Xie’s figures. Thresholds which he sensitively describes through the bodily proportions, and expressions of the fleshy containers that we each inhabit. Between the material and the spiritual, these works all contain surfaces that oscillate between the transitory and the eternal.

Artists: Xie Lei, Leyla Aydoslu.