For Xie, papers are all the news that's fit to paint Print friendly

It's been a little less than comfortable, these past few years, to be working in the newspaper industry in an era when the industry itself -- its ethical troubles, its political intrigues and especially its much-publicized economic challenges as readers and advertisers drift away to the Internet -- is so much in the news.

In an odd way, then, it's heartening for a beleaguered newspaperman like me to come across "Both Sides Now," Xiaoze Xie's fascinating and painstakingly executed one-man show at the Zolla/Lieberman Gallery.

This group of a dozen paintings evokes today's media-saturated world, with newspapers as the primary conduit for a bewildering onslaught of images of war, social unrest, fiscal turmoil and political bickering -- the bread and butter of what was once known as the fourth estate.

The sensation triggered by many of these accomplished works (mostly done in beautifully applied oil on canvas) is that harried sense of being the target of a constant barrage of information, when perhaps what we'd all rather do is curl up under a warm coverlet with a nice cup of tea. (Earl Grey, anyone?) Stacks of newspapers offer readymade collages in some of the paintings (as in the best-in-show "September-October 2007, C.T.," created this year), while in others, Xie manufactures the effect by layering images of clippings from different newspapers from around the world.

The result is largely unsettling, and yet it's notable -- and, for this ink-stained wretch, strangely comforting -- that in calling forth the McLuhanesque media-scape that's the subject of so much contemporary art, Xie turns not to the banal flickering of 24/7 cable news or the even more ephemeral World Wide Web, but to a medium still dependent on dead trees and gas-guzzling delivery trucks. To him, it seems, newspapers are the primary culprit in the Too Much Information syndrome afflicting the populace, but at least we scribes are still relevant. In this exhibit, reader, we are not dead. We are still oppressively, obsessively, resplendently with you, and in these paintings we continue to bring you that which haunts your dreams, whether you like it or not.

I, for one, haven't felt this needed in years.

It's an admittedly self-centered viewpoint. Seen through that navel-gazing lens, a group of three paintings in Zolla/Lieberman's south gallery is the most romantically nostalgic in the show and, therefore, the most disturbing. Where the other newspaper paintings teem with headlines, photographs (of George Bush, Hillary Clinton, war in the Middle East, collapsed buildings, lots of guns, etc.) and snippets of text ("... no 'silver bullet' or specific intelligence that could have prevented the hijacking"), this trio shows piles of newspapers silently accumulating.

Perhaps they've been read and set aside, awaiting the recycling bin or the birdcage, or maybe they've been fended off or simply ignored, allowed to mount in a corner. They're still faintly buzzing with all the disturbing stuff they contain, but mainly they're just familiar domestic objects, oddly beautiful and calming, like bibelots on your grandma's parlor table, amiably collecting dust.

A slight chill descended upon me in this gallery, for some reason, and I left it as soon as I could.