Born in Nanjing, China, in 1954, Xiao Fan has lived and worked in Paris since 1983. Shaped by both Eastern and Western artistic and intellectual traditions, his practice establishes a singular dialogue between tradition and contemporaneity, memory and modernity.
The artist describes himself as “a man before nature,” a position that permeates his entire body of work. For Xiao Fan, nature is a territory of observation, memory, and reflection. His floral compositions, often hybrid and organic in appearance, explore the delicate boundary between attraction and unease, beauty and proliferation. Rooted in the Chinese cultural imagination, these flowers carry a rich symbolic resonance, oscillating between ancestral poetry and historical memory.
Still life occupies a central place in his artistic vocabulary. Bouquets, crustaceans, toys, and objects drawn from contemporary consumer culture become the protagonists of compositions of remarkable visual intensity. Through these abundant accumulations, Xiao Fan reflects on the transformations of contemporary societies, examining their desires, excesses, and vulnerabilities.
This reflection also finds expression in a series of porcelain sculptures inspired by Buddhist figures. Crowned with delicate floral heads that evoke the spiritual geometry of the mandala, these contemplative presences appear suspended beyond time. Gently poised upon crystal spheres, they celebrate the millennia-old heritage of porcelain craftsmanship through the subtle interplay of unglazed biscuit porcelain and celadon or pale blue-white glazes, revealing both the artist’s technical mastery and poetic sensibility.
Xiao Fan’s oeuvre unfolds as a sensitive meditation on the human condition, poised between memory and modernity, abundance and fragility, and sustained by an ever-renewed relationship with the living world.