What Can I Say About Mei?

Move over David Lachapelle and Pierre et Gilles. Get back Wang Qingsong.

Here comes Mei Xian Qui. Eastern themes of post Chairman Mao politics enliven a bizarre dialog in Mei’s highly original, super sexy, uber-feminine photography. Mei is a quintessential Los Angeles artist, whipping up images in which Asian and Western themes implode in a delightful mélange of post modern sensibility.

LET A THOUSAND FLOWERS BLOOM, HOLLYWOODLAND (2010)

Mei’s photographs take me into a world I’ve never seen before. Many allude to classic western tableaux, a nod to her painterly background. But then Mei infuses her work with a dramatic narrative. She catches her models in moments filled with expectancy and anticipation. She poses her characters, which are often gender ambiguous, as if they are in a play. Her actors often allude to a sexual back story, and seem to promise a big surprise at the end, after they have left her stage.

Mei Xian Qiu was born in the town of Pekalongan, on the island of Java, Indonesia, to a third generation Chinese minority family. She has lived all over Europe, is based in Los Angeles and makes frequent trips back to China. “I feel 100% Chinese Indonesian, and 100% American. I am a part of a kind of floating culture. My sense of individual identity becomes linked to something ever shifting and transient.”

I first met the Mei Xian Qui through the Los Angeles Art Association – we are both artist members. Peter Mays, the association’s director thrilled to promote her work, was quite proud that his Gallery 825 could provide a launch pad for her stratospheric career trajectory. Mei is blowing up big. At their Photo LA booth, her photographs sold handsomely. Then the L.A. Art Association took the artist to Basel Switzerland, where she sold every work she showed and took orders for five additional pieces. Peter was delighted and plans to take Mei to Art Basel Miami Beach in December. “I love her work; it’s timely, contemporary and challenging.”

I have watched Mei’s photography mature and marry her diverse inspirations to their current incarnation, which she renders in Plexiglas. Mei prints onto the Plexiglas itself allowing a gentle backlight to infuse her imagery. Against a delicate palette of tropical birds and pink flowers, this soft kiss of backlight lays down a gossamer femininity and lightness that leaves me gender intrigued and scratching my head in delight wondering what is really going on in her photographs. The artist, sweet-natured and quick-smiled,
cultivates an air of purposeful mystery.

Rex Bruce, director of LACDA, Los Angeles Center for Digital Art, who showed the artist a few months ago, told me, “Mei Xian Qui is an artist with the perfect balance of humor, politics, multiculturalism and visual pleasure. Her images are exquisite and irresistible—her peculiar combinations of gay love, Chinese takeover, and L.A. pop sensibility illicit a sense of surprise in the onlooker.”

How gay is Mei? Can the work of an Asian woman on Plexiglas really evoke gay anyway? And what is gay today? In her post-modern world of ethnic diversity, can’t we all be gay for a day? Half the fun in Mei’s work is trying to decode the artist’s campy, sometimes zany, quasi-political iconography.

Mei Xian Qui is about process-melding her Asian and Los Angeles identities to constantly collide in clever, amusing and surprising ways. Her work is adorable, campy art that has both pith and ash. Who could ask for more? Resistance is futile. I’m wanting a piece to hang on my living room wall.

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Booth — Los Angeles Center for Digital Arts:

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(above the fireplace)

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On Saturday I was walking through an Art Opening in Los Angeles when I ran into Mei Xian’s work. At first the bright colors and the big canvases are what caught my attention and suddenly I was hooked. Her work is full of irony, meaning and poetry. Mei was born in Java, Indonesia from Chinese parents, they migrated to California when she was very young spending her life between the US and China as a parental attempt to not being westernized. You can see her life in her juxtaposed work of photography, glass and illustration. Beautifully displayed against the light making all the layers and colors come to life. Her work not surprisingly ended up in the pages of Living ETC, UK for the May issue. I really enjoyed meeting Mei; she was warm and eager to explain her work to me and eager to know about other people’s juxtaposed lives as well. Enjoy!

Photos via: Mei Xian Qiu

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MEI XIAN QIU		EARLY SPRING Curated by Phil Tarley at ARTIST’S CORNER, a new contemporary photography gallery in Hollywood.

Hollywood, CA — EARLY SPRING opens Friday September 21 st and continues through Sunday, October 21, 2012. The opening night reception for the artist starts at 7pm. EARLY SPRING features four new works and a selection of her most iconic and favorite pieces – all of which are printed on a plexiglass. The show’s catalog, its front and back covers also printed on plexiglass, is signed and numbered in an edition of 100 and will be available for sale as EARLY SPRING’S opening night special. Visually and intellectually sophisticated, Mei Xian Qiu’s colorful artworks have strong currents of political, sexual and racial subtext. All the while, this whimsical artist infuses her photography with a campy cleverness and a painterly, highly cultivated eye — swirled together in a delightful melange of post-modern sensability. Mei Xian Qiu is a Los Angeles artist working in a totally new cultural paradigm. Mei was born in the town of Pekalongan, on the island of Java, Indonesia, to a third generation Chinese minority family. She has lived all over Europe, is based in Los Angeles and makes frequent trips back to China. “I feel 100% Chinese Indonesian, and 100% American. I am a part of a kind of floating culture. My sense of individual identity becomes linked to something ever shifting and transient.” The Los Angeles Art Association has taken Mei Xian Qui’s work to Photo LA and to Art Basel in Switzerland, facilitating sold out shows. Artist Corner’s curator, Phil Tarley, also a member of LAAA, has watched Mei Xian Qiu’s stratospheric rise as an internationally acclaimed Los Angeles artist. Phil Tarley is a Fellow of the American Film Institute and an artist member of the Los Angeles Art Association. As an art and pop culture critic he regularly posts stories on the Wow Report; writes about art and photography for Fabrik Magazine; contributes to Art Week LA and is a juror on the Lark International Art Competition. He has recently been appointed to a City of West Hollywood task force on Public Art Installation. With his partner Carlos Benitez, Tarley opened Artist’s Corner, Hollywood’s newest contemporary photography gallery. EARLY SPRING at ARTIST’S CORNER 6585 Santa Monica Boulevard, Hollywood, CA 90038 A bright red building on the corner of Seward Street. Telephone: (323) 464-3900 Gallery Hours: Monday – Friday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday by appointment. Visit the gallery’s website at: http://bookblocks.us/ArtistsCornerGallery.html Read Fabrik’s MEI XIAN QIU Cover Story, written by Phil Tarley now by clicking on this link.

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