This first monography dedicated to the artist Xie Lei provides an overview that seeks to shed light on the mystery surrounding his painting. Through its essays and interviews, an extensive portfolio, reference works and a plethora of bibliographic and iconographic content, it enables us to explore the origins of Xie Lei’s work, its evolution, its prominent features and its ambiguity. This publication yields inferences–perhaps–and more surely, allows us to take measure of the troubled situations into which the artist’s painting projects us. Discreetly related to literary and cinematic memories, or plucked from the deep crucible of his feelings, these images explore desires and obsessions, as secret as they are universal.