Chinese Contemporary Artists / France
1. Contemporary Chinese artists in France/ News France
Danhôo
DANHOO
Nos Arts, Nos Origines
From November 14 to November 30, 2024, A2Z Art Gallery in Paris is presenting the exhibition “Nos Arts, Nos Origines” by Danhôo with the tandem Laurence and Matthieu Graffensttaden. Danhôo combines contemporary painting with traditional Chinese writing. He deconstructs calligraphic characters to create abstractions. Laurence and Matthieu Graffensttaden are a duo of artists: together they have developed a totally innovative concept, creating pictorial works from human cells. By hijacking medical procedures, they create canvases that are soft, dreamlike and colorful.
https://www.facebook.com/danhooartiste/
https://www.graffensttaden.fr/
2. Contemporary Chinese Artists France/ News World
MA DESHENG
Solo exhibition
Oriane gallery in Munich is presenting an exhibition by the French-artist Ma Desheng, CD Grande Suite, from 7 November 2024 to 22 January 2025.
Between abstraction and figuration, female silhouettes are the real subject of Ma Deshen's paintings. To Ma Desheng, stone is the catalyst of all beings animated by energy, the witnessing support of eternity. This relationship, both physical and sensitive, carries the hope of eternal life: Harmony.
https://red-zone-arts-gallery.com/portfolio-item/madesheng/
Chinese Contemporary Artists France. Profiles, Works, Exhibitions
23 CHINESE ARTISTS IN FRANCE
CHU TEH-CHUN
CHEN JIANG-HONG
CHHOUR KALOON
DANHOO
FENG XIAO-MIN
FU SITE
GAO XINGJIAN
GUO CHENG DONG
HUANG YONG PING
LI CHEVALIER
LI DONGLU
MA DESHENG
RU XIAO FAN
SHEN YUAN
WANG DU
WANG KEPING
WANG YAN CHENG
WANG YU
WONG WA
YAN PEI-MING
YANG JIECHANG
ZAO WOU-KI
ZHAO BIRU
CHU TEH-CHUN
CHU TEH-CHUN is a contemporary painter of Chinese origin. He is a visual artist who has chosen abstraction; he integrated the techniques of Chinese painting and Western abstract art. His value has exploded in the contemporary art market over the past ten years.
Chu Teh-Chun ranked 70th in the Artprice top 100 in the world ranking of best-selling artists at auction with a turnover of € 23 M in 2023.
On 26 May 2018, at Christie's, Chu-Teh-Chun got HK$28.9m (US$3.7m) for his painting 'Composition 51: 'A Thousand Lives hiding in the Wood' (1960) and No. 81 HK$38.3m (US$4.9m). And his painting 'Synthèse hivernale C' (1988), sold on 4 June 2019, by Artcurial, in Toulouse, for €5,177,400, multiplying by 5 its estimate. This was a new record for a work by the artist sold in Europe and the highest price for a painting sold in France in 2019.
The CHU Teh-Chun Foundation was established in Geneva in 2017 by the CHU family. It is dedicated to the collection, exhibition, conservation and interpretation of CHU Teh-Chun's art and archives.
https://chu-teh-chun.org/fr/accueil
PROFILE OF THE ARTIST
Chu Teh-Chun was born on 24 October 1920 in Baitou Zhen, Anhui province, China. In 1935, he started sudying at the Hangzhou School of Fine Arts. He graduated in 1941. After working as a teacher in Nanjing, he moved to Taipei in 1949, where he was a university professor and taught Western painting until 1955. That same year he moved to France. He died on 26 March 2014 in Paris.
"Chu Teh-Chun's works seem to combine the natural elements - air, water, earth, fire - and lead to a kind of cosmic naturalism," says Jean-Paul Desroches, heritage curator at the Musée Guimet. His inspirations are drawn from the older masters. "For example, Chu Teh Chun takes the luminosity of the Venetian artists and mixes it with the chromatic intensity of Goya's art. His paintings are subtle and penetrating, they have an oriental poetic charm".
In China, Chu Teh-Chun met artists such as Wu Guanzhong and Zao Wou-Ki who influenced him. His first solo exhibition took place in 1953, where he exhibited a number of landscapes he had painted in the Alishan Mountains.
On arriving in Paris in 1955, Chu Teh-Chun discovered the work of Nicolas de Staël, who also influenced him greatly and who led him from figurative painting to pure abstraction. The Chinese pictorial and spiritual traditions are nevertheless always present in Chu Teh-Chun's research.
In the 2000s, he became interested in ceramics and set up a project with the Manufacture nationale de Sèvres. He painted a series of 57 vases - from the collection "De Neige, d'Or et d'Azur" - over a period of two years, once again drawing inspiration from Chinese tradition. Chu Teh-Chun also painted a large work for the Shanghai Opera House in 2003, which is displayed in the lobby of the building.
One of his most striking paintings remains "Peaceful Cartes" (1985) which takes up all the codes of Western painting, associated with a traditional Chinese painting technique.
In June 2021, the Shang Xia House with the collaboration of the CHU Teh-Chun Foundation unveiled a new collection of accessories in limited series. Classics of the Shang Xia house, such as the Moon handbag "Lan Yue" or silk squares were interpreted by the master craftsmen, paying tribute to CHU Teh-Chun.
EXHIBITIONS
Chu Teh-Chun had nearly 450 exhibitions: 156 personal and 285 collective exhibitions in more than 24 countries. In 1987, the National Museum of History in Taipei organized a major retrospective exhibition for him, thirty-two years after his departure from China.
An exhibition by Chu Teh-Chun "Chu Teh-Chun: In Nebula" was presented at Giorgio Cini Foundation, at 60th Venice Biennale, Italy, from 20 April to 30 June 2024. This retrospective exhibition was supported by the Chu Teh-Chun Foundation and showcases timeless masterpieces of the artist.
Alisan Fine Arts HK presented its fifth exhibition of Chu Teh-Chun as part of the French May Arts Festival in Hong Kong, from May 13 to July 31, 2021.
https://chu-teh-chun.org/fr/expositions
CHEN JIANG-HONG
CHEN JIANG-HONG is a painter and illustrator of Chinese origin who grew up in China during the Cultural Revolution.
Contact: https://www.tamenaga.com/artist-detail/239209/chen-jiang-hong
PROFILE OF THE ARTIST
Chen Jiang-Hong was born in Tianjin, northern China in 1963. He graduated from Tianjin School of Decorative Arts and Beijing School of Fine Arts. In 1988, he obtained a scholarship to study at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts in Paris, from which he graduated. He has been living and working in France since 1987.
Chen Jiang-Hong is very attached to the painting techniques and ancient traditions of China even if he has oriented himself in his painting towards a more universal abstraction. 0´ this point, the artist says "It is important for me to bring the culture to which I am deeply attached and to allow it to cross borders and that others are part of it. I try to tell stories in such a way that they become universal." Chen Jiang-Hong thus developed his own aesthetic, merging the traditions of Eastern and Western painting, deeply influenced by his own experience of life between two cultures. For his abstract paintings, Chen Jian-Hong uses oil painting. His themes revolve around nature, bamboos and lotus flowers. His colors range from red to ochre to black. He also uses the techniques of calligraphy and paintings on the floor with long brushes made of wolf hair. He uses Indian ink for his illustrations. He also combines Indian ink with unusual materials such as sawdust. Chen Jiang-Hong is indeed an illustrator of albums of great refinement, using subtle hues. His stories blend the legends, culture and history of China with universal feelings and issues for today's children. His best-known album is 'Mao and I, the Little Red Guard' (2008) in which he recounts his own childhood during the Cultural Revolution. On February 3, 2018, he presented his books The Tiger Prince and The Magic Horse by Han Gan at the bookstore La Méridienne at La Chaux de Fonds, France. He occasionally painted live on a giant canvas.
Galerie Taménaga presented a major exhibition of the artist's work from 9 to 29 October 2020. The Chinese artist has recently opened up to new aesthetic preoccupations, and reveals that he has been craving colour! In his latest paintings, deep blues rub shoulders with lagoon greens, and ochres rival flamboyant reds.
His latest paintings, presented at Asia Now 2023 by the Tamenaga gallery, were in contrast a deep black from which emanated a great deal of light.
EXHIBITIONS
Chen Jiang-Hong had his first solo exhibition in China, in Beijing, in 1987. In 1989, his paintings were exhibited at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. Since then he has had numerous exhibitions both in France and abroad.
Latest solo exhibitions: 2024 Chen Jiang-Hong, Galerie Tamenaga Paris ; 2023 "Chen Jiang-Hong, voyages intérieurs", Galerie Taménaga Paris ; 2022 Tamenaga Gallery, Osaka and Tokyo ; 2020 Galerie Tamenaga, Paris
Chen Jiang-Hong participated in Art Fair Tokyo (10-12 March 2023), presented by Tamenaga Gallery
Chen Jiang-Hong participed in Asia Now 2022 & 2023, presented by galerie Tamenaga.
EXHIBITIONS
Chen Jiang-Hong: "I paint with my words and write with my paintings"
CHHOUR KALOON
CHHOUR KALOON is a contemporary artist of Chinese origin who has chosen abstraction for his painting.
contact : http://www.chhour.com/
PROFILE OF THE ARTIST
Chhour Kaloon was born in Cambodia in a Chinese family from Guangzhou Province in 1968. Following the Khmer Rouge genocide, he lost a large part of his family. He managed to flee to find refuge in Thailand. He studied at the Art Academy in Hong Kong and then arrived in France, at the age of 21 and study painting with Katia Kostoff from the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris where he discovered the masters of Impressionism. He lives and works in Nice.
Chhour Kaloon first started painting in the figurative style he was taught and then turned to impressionism and fauvism. From his arrival in Nice in 2003, at the age of 35, everything changed, he chose abstraction always using strong colors such as black or red and warm as yellow and orange. His canvases are very constructed with the use of glazes, drippings, mediums, brushes, knives.
Chhour Kaloon's paintings are a mixture of East and West. He illustrates the balance of Yin and Yang by intentionally leaving sections of the composition empty or full. Speaking about one of his paintings, Chhour Kaloon explains: "I finished this painting in August 2015 in my studio in Nice. Some people will see the cosmos in it or whatever, but it doesn't matter because a painting only lives through the eyes of the person who feels it through his deepest and most intimate senses. Even if I break one of my rules about not commenting on my paintings, I think it is a symbolic and abstract representation of the cycle of life on earth and beyond, which is a heritage of my Asian culture and Buddhism. The bottom of the painting is water, the origin of life, the one we know, and for us humans the amniotic fluid of our mother. The centre is life with the sun and its yellow heat. But these two parts are crossed by black lines and dark red touches. Yin and Yang always reappear. This central part bursts into small touches on the top left towards a very dark and tortured background... Darkness. Fortunately at the top right, there is a deep and evanescent blue. Again life is here... Let it be clear that this interpretation of the painting is made a posteriori because if I have a fairly clear idea of the composition of a painting before its implementation, I often have no intention about the final work and its symbolism. It's my brush that guides me and in my brush, there's my mind doing what it wants."
For Max Laniado of the Visio Dell'Arte gallery, "Chhour is the revelation of the current of poetic abstraction. He brings innovative creativity combining Impressionist and Asian influences, meditation on feelings and gestural 'choreography' in harmonious works exuding emotion and beauty."
Chhour Kaloon was very likely inspired by artists like Zao Wou-ki or Chu Teh-Chun, leaders of the poetic abstraction movement.
In recent years, he discovered other mediums such as ceramics, watercolor, engraving and ink painting.
EXHIBITIONS
Chhour Kaloon has exhibitions in many galleries in France and abroad.
Among his recent solo exhibitions: "Emotions Picturales", at the Vieceli Gallery, in Cannes, from June 17 to July 9, 2022. https://galerievieceli.com/artiste/chhour-kaloon/
An exhibition was also dedicated to him at the Museum of Asian Arts in Nice, France, in 2019.
Other solo exhibitions: 2016, Chhour Kaloon, Poetic Abstraction Galerie Visio Dell'Arte New York; 2015, June 2015, Barclays Bank, Paris, March 2015, Visio Dell'Arte Gallery, Paris, February 2015, Visio Dell'Arte Max Laniado Gallery, New York, USA; 2014, Visio Dell'Arte Gallery, Paris, Visio Dell'Arte Max Laniado Gallery, New York; 2013, Visio Dell'Arte Gallery, Paris, Galerie Saint-Martin, Arcachon, France; 2012, Visio Dell'Arte Gallery, Paris, Banque Monte Paschi, Paris, France; 2011, Visio Dell'Arte Gallery, Paris, Hilton Hotel, Paris, France; 2010, Visio Dell'Arte Gallery, Paris; 2009, Visio Dell'Arte Gallery, Paris, France 2009, Chapelle Ste Elizabeth, Villefranche/Mer, 2009, Espace Art de Nice Expo 2009, Palais des Festivals de Cannes, BNP Paribas Bank, Nice
Chhour Kaloon interview by galerie Vieceli, June 2022
DANHOO
DANHOO is a contemporary artist of Chinese origin, me living in Paris since 1983.
Danhôo (@danhooartiste) • Photos et vidéos Instagram
Danhôo - Accueil | Facebook
NEWS
Danhôo and L & M Graffensttaden are presenting "Nos Arts, nos Origines" at A2Z Art Gallery, from 14 to 30 November 2024
PROFILE OF THE ARTIST
Danhôo was born in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, in 1966, in a Chinese family. When he arrived in France in 1983, he worked for Maison Marin, a specialist in materials for artists. From there he met artists such as Ernest Pignon Ernest, Zao Wou-Ki and Olivier Debré before devoting himself fully to painting. He was then the assistant of Erro, Robert Combas, or Lee Ufan. He currently lives and works in France.
"Danhôo uses the symbols of Asian calligraphy as a basis by placing ideograms on the white canvas. The canvases are then laid out on the ground to be worked by flat areas of paint by flowing, offering the painting a texture, a work of relief and a new material".
Danhôo combines contemporary painting and traditional Chinese writing. He has his own style, far removed from academic mastery. He deconstructs calligraphic characters to offer an abstraction. Danhôo generally uses Jackson Pollock's Dripping and All-Over techniques for his work.
Danhôo's Chinese characters symbolise Love, Dream, Money, Sharing, Happiness, Friendship and Family.
A monograph of Danhôo was published in March 2022 (contributors: David Rosenberg, Tatiana Phuong, Evia Production)
EXHIBITIONS
Danhôo has had several solo exhibitions, the most recent : 2023 "Les couleurs des Maux" avec Trần Trọng Vũ, A2Z Art Gallery/ Asia society; "Elements", A2Z Art Gallery, Paris ; 2022 "Transition", A2Z Art Gallery, Paris ; 2021 "Behind the Fog", A2Z Art Gallery, Mairie de Vitry sur Seine, Lunar Year Celebration; 2020 "Being of Light", A2Z Art Gallery Paris; 2019 "Between Two Cultures", A2Z Art Gallery, Paris, France; Abstraction Calligraphique, A2Z Art Gallery, Hong Kong, "Vibrations", Yors Ben Ammar Gallery, Club House Gammarth, Tunisia; 2018 "Psynaps", A2Z Art Gallery, Hong Kong, Domaine Départemental de Chamarande, Chamarande, France; 2017-2018 Forum de la Fnac, Andorra, France, Galerie Itinerrance, Paris, France.
Danhôo exhibited at Guangzhou K11 Art Mall in China, from August 9 to October 27 2024, as part of the group exhibition entitled "8220 km", organized by A2Z Art gallery and MOORDN Art Connexion.
Danhôo exhibited 12 paintings inside the Samu social, in Paris 12th, until 11 June 2024.
Danhôo participated in the exhibition pressented by Asia Society France, "Les Couleurs des Maux", from 23 June to 26 August 2023.
Danhôo participated in Art Paris Art Fair 2022, à Paris Art Fair 2021, Asia Now Paris 2019, presented by A2Z Art Gallery ; in 2017 he participated in 13 Art Fair - Urban Contemporary, represented by Yosr Ben Ammar Gallery, Les Docks - Cité de la Mode et du Design, Paris, France.
FENG XIAO-MIN
FENG XIAO-MIN is a French-Chinese contemporary artist, painter and calligrapher who arrived in France in 1988.
Feng Xiao-Min sold at Sotheby's in October 2019 a work entitled 'Composition 20-01-15' for HK$1,500,000 (US$193,505.94). He sold at Christie's Hong Kong a work "08.05.15' for 2 016,000 HK$ on May 27, 2022.
http://fengxiaomin.com/
PROFILE OF THE ARTIST
Feng Xiao-Min was born in Shanghai in 1959. He studied art in China at the Academy of Fine Arts and the National College of Art, and then started studying at the Haimo Academy of Fine Arts in Shanghai. He left China for France in 1988 where he continued his studies at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. From 1997 to 2000, he taught calligraphy and technique at the Ecole des Beaux Arts de Paris.
Feng Xiao-Min's work shows a great mastery of colour and a painting technique close to the works of the great Franco-Chinese artists Zao Wou-ki and Chu Teh-Chun, with whom he has worked closely. The artist is inspired by traditional Chinese calligraphy. He uses acrylic on canvas and skilfully imitates the Chinese aesthetic of ink on paper. Rather than a subject or a place, Feng Xiao-Min focuses on the visual effect produced by the mix of colours and the spatial configuration of the image. The world and the image he offers us lead us to an immersion of the senses. The artist combines eastern aesthetics and western techniques in his landscape visions, from dusk to dawn.
EXHIBITIONS
Solo and group exhibitions
Feng Xiao-Min's last solo exhibitions: 2024 'Brush of Light', Opera Gallery, Hong Kong ; 2023 "Feng Xiao-Min’s ‘Reflections’, Opera Gallery, Singapore; 2021 "Compositions", Opera Gallery Paris.
In November 2023, Opera Gallery presented works by Feng Xiao-Min at FAB Paris (Fine Arts Paris & La Biennale) 2023 art fair.
Works by Feng Xiao-Min were also exhibited at Shanghai Art Fair ART021 (9-12 November 2023).
Feng Xiao-Min's works were presented at Opera Gallery in Hong Kong in August 2022 and in Singapore in April 2022.
The artist participated at Art Central 2023, in Hong Kong, presented by Opera Gallery.
Feng Xiao-Min participated in Opera Gallery Dubai's exhibition "Abstraction: a visual reality", in March 2022.
He also participated in Art Paris 2022 (Grand Palais Ephémère) and Art Paris 2021
EXHIBITIONS
Feng Xiao-Min interviewed by Mandarin TV in Paris in November 2021
FU SITE
FU SITE is a contemporary painter from the young Chinese generation, who has been living in Paris for ten years.
https://www.instagram.com/fusite_studio/
PROFILE OF THE ARTIST
Fu Site was born in the Liaoning province in China in 1984. He graduated from Tsinghua University in Beijing (2006), the Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Versailles (2011) and the Ecole Supérieure d'Art du Nord Pas de Calais (2014).
Fu Site, born in China, finds his influences in great masters such as Francis Bacon for the intensity of his characters, in the romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich, for the mystical side of his landscapes, or in Edward Hopper for the feeling of isolation in his paintings.
The artist also has a fascination for Western interiors, which he depicts stripped of their original context, juxtaposing baroque settings and more recently contemporary interiors, transposing them into a new space and thus composing a fictional image. In early 2017, Galerie Paris-Beijing presented the artist's latest work ("Disrupted Narrative"): namely an assemblage of shadows and reflections, human presences, images of interiors and natural landscapes.
In 2014, Galerie Paris Beijing had already devoted a first exhibition to the artist, entitled "Politicians". "It evoked the complexity, even the cruelty, of contemporary political debates and fights, by featuring evanescent figures of men fighting, discussing, or simply finding themselves in strange situations.
"Fu Site's paintings have a fascination for darkness, allegories, dreamlike and unconscious. The artist uses a mixed technique - Indian ink, pencil, oil - which allows him to introduce a troubled temporality into his paintings.
Fu Site also claims to be strongly influenced by the seventh art. He composes his paintings with framings that are typical of film techniques, like freeze-frames.
Commenting on Fu Site's last exhibition "Jeux de créatures" at the Paris-B gallery in 2022, the German journalist Heinz-Norbert Jocks said: "In front of his extraordinary paintings, which have something of the escape from reality into the imagination of a dreamlike realm, into a fantastically surreal hemisphere - and no less unconsciously bordering on reality - one has the impression that the painter Fu Site lets the hallucination guide his hand into a "lie-true" (Louis Aragon) producing strange transient phenomena from colours."
Fu Site has a solo show in Shanghai for the first time, at MadeIn gallery, from 6 May to 24 June 2023.
Fu Site was presented by Paris-B gallery at Art SG Singapore, in January 2024.
The START Museum in Shanghai presented a solo exhibition by Fu Site, "Figures", from 19 May to 7 July 2024. The exhibition brought together nearly 20 works by the artist, all based on the theme "Figures", the result of his latest research and his evolution as a painter.
EXHIBITIONS
Fu Site's latest exhibitions: 2024 "Figures", START Museum, Shanghai . 2023, Fu Site, MadeIn gallery, Shanghai from 6 May to 24 June 2023.
Fu Site exhibited at ART021 in Shanghai from 7 au 10 November 2024, presented by Madein gallery.
Galerie Paris Beijing has already devoted four solo exhibitions to Fu Site: 2022, "Jeux de Créatures", Galerie Paris-B, Paris, France; 2021 Fu Site, Kylin Gallery, Los Angeles, Usa; 2018 2018 Forking Paths | GAWA (TCT and Co.x W. Ming), W. Ming Art, Shanghai, China; 2017, "Disrupted Narrative"; in 2014 'Politicians'.
Fu Site exhibited 'Fictions in Fragments' at Kylin Gallery, Los Angeles, until 28 February 2021. video : https://www.kylingallery.com/fictions-in-f-vr
In 2021, he participated in the group exhibition "Salon de Imperfectionism", Wonzimer, Los Angeles, Usa.
By the end of 2019, Fu Site participated in the group exhibition 'Figure This' at Thames-Side Studios Gallery in London
He participated in the art fair Art Paris 2022, Paris, and "Asia Now" Paris, in October 2022 and 2023, presentedd by Paris-B gallery.
BIO/EXHIBITIONS
GAO XINGJIAN
GAO XINGJIAN is a French writer, playwright, director, painter and visual artist of Chinese origin. He belongs to the generation that lived through the political revolutions in China until he left for France in 1987 after the Tiananmen tragedy in 1989. After these events, he completed his novel and wrote the play "La Fuite", which led to a total ban on all his works in China. Known as a writer - winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature - Gao Xingjian's reputation as a painter is more recent, even though he has been the subject of numerous exhibitions throughout the world.
PROFILE OF THE ARTIST
Gao Xingjian was born on 4 January 1940 in Ganzhou, China. Given the political circumstances of the time, his mother opposed his entry into the Beijing Fine Arts School, preferring to send him to the Institute of Foreign Languages from which he graduated (1962). He lives in Paris, and in France since 1987.
From the novel to painting, Gao Xingjian now devotes all his time to pictorial creation. He works with Indian ink on a white background. "To return to painting is to free oneself from verbiage, to return concepts to language, to paint where language is no longer sufficient, to begin to paint even where one has finished speaking", explains the artist in his book 'For another aesthetic'. In 1978, Gao Xingjian abandoned oil painting and turned to ink. "I use Chinese ink, though it is not a mark of Chinese civilisation. It goes beyond the East. Besides Chinese ink, I use painting on canvas, the frame and the canvas being completely Western, traditional. So there is the Eastern material and the Western material," he said. Since 1990, Gao Xinjian has opted to use canvas instead of paper, which is too fragile, to produce large formats. His works are thus imbued with traditional Chinese culture and thought, combined with a modern Western aesthetic; the artist also shows great sensitivity. Gao Xingjian began to be recognised as a painter in the West following an informal trip to Berlin in 1985, during which "some people fell in love with his work" and then organised an exhibition for him.
A Knight of Arts and Letters, Gao Xingjian was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2000 and the Premio Letterario Feronia in Italy. As a writer, Gao Xingjian is best known for his novel The Mountain of the Soul (1995), a "Taoist odyssey, at once a "classic picaresque and marvellous tale" and "an evocation of absurd or Kafkaesque reality", according to his translator Noël Dutrait. He is also the author of "The Book of a Single Man" (1999). In 2002, he wrote an opera, "La Neige en Août", which was premiered in Taipei and at the Opéra de Marseille. He also directed the film 'Après le déluge', in 2008. He has also directed several plays. Five monumental works by Gao Xingjian, specially created by the artist to decorate the Bernheim room of the museum, are now on display at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. On the occasion of the "Gao Xingjian" exhibition at the Art Paris Art Fair 2017, at the Grand Palais, an installation by Albertine Meunier, dedicated to the artist - "Le livre infini" - was presented at the Galerie Claude Bernard stand.
As part of its 2019 Art Season, the Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire, in the Cher Department, France, presented from 27 March to 3 November 2019 a large exhibition of dreamlike landscapes in ink by Gao Xingjian. With his "Call for a New Renaissance", Gao Xingjian, an adept of total art, advocates a new way of thinking to change the world and awaken consciousness through culture. Writer, painter, playwright, director, poet, Gao Xingjian calls for a return to artistic creation without borders, multidisciplinary, non-utilitarian and non-merchandised, exploring the complexities of the human soul, with the aim of achieving a perfect communion of hearts and minds," explains Chantal Colleu-Dumond.
EXHIBITIONS
Numerous solo exhibitions have been regularly devoted to Gao Xingjian since 1985, in Germany, Belgium, France, Spain, the United States, Sweden, Switzerland and Taiwan. The Ixelles Museum in Belgium devoted a retrospective to him in 2015: 'Gao Xingjian: the awakening of consciousness'.
Latest exhibition: "Inner Vision 2023" at Alisan Fine Arts Gallery in Hong Kong, from 18 May to au 31 August 2023
Gao Xingjian, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2000, was made a commander on 6 April 2022.
PAST EXHIBITIONS
GUO CHENG DONG
GUO CHENG DONG is a Chinese sculptor, trained at the Luxun School of Fine Arts in China. He has been living in France since 2002. Guo Cheng-Dong is very famous and awarded for his magnificent sculptures of horses. He is the son of a famous Chinese jade sculptor whose work greatly influenced his orientation towards sculpture.
contact : http://chengdongguo.com/
https://www.instagram.com/guo.chengdong/?hl=fr
PROFILE OF THE ARTIST
Guo Cheng Dong was born in 1975 in Shengyang (China). He graduated from the Luxun School of Fine Arts, Liaoning Province; he completed his training at the Versailles-Paris School of Fine Arts (2003-2005). He lives and works in Paris (in Zao Wou-Ki studio). His wife Meng Juan is a plastic artist.
"My work aimed very early on to express both the changes in the world and freedom," explains Guo Cheng Dong.
The artist makes sculptures of horses for which he won numerous prizes. His sculpture "Junma" won first prize at the Art cheval exhibition in Saumur in 2006 and the special prize at the Rambouillet biennial in 2008. The whole of his work is marked by the progressive assimilation of the human and horse body. "While they were initially juxtaposed, they are now tending towards unity," says the artist.
"I have worked a lot with the figure of the horse as a symbol of escape and renewal. When I left China 20 years ago, memories and sculpture were the only means I had to reconnect with my family and roots. So I developed the image of the horse into a more abstract and minimalist representation. Just like the life I have in France," says the artist.
More academic at the beginning of his artistic production, Guo Cheng Dong's work has evolved over the years. He has moved away from the physical body and figuration to explore abstract forms and consolidate an imaginary futuristic impulse brought by his education and technique. His initial training in carved jade stone has a direct impact on the treatment of his current works.
Guo Cheng Dong also created monumental works - on commission - such as for the former Russian president Boris Yeltsin or the Singaporean Wu Zuodong. In 1999, he was awarded the first international prize for his ice sculptures in Harbin, China.
As part of a summer exhibition dedicated to Chinese art, the Cernuschi Museum exhibited a selection of objects from its collections on the theme of equestrian art until 29 September 2024. Guo Cheng Dong's bronze sculpture "Emballe le cheval", bronze (2009)was one of the works on display.
Guo Cheng Dong participated in "Face 2022" exhibition, organized by the Society of Portrait Sculptors, in the Garrison Chapel, in London, from 8 August to 2 September 2022. He presented a portrait entitled "Mother's mother".
Open Exhibition | FACE 2022 | The Society of Portrait Sculptors (portrait-sculpture.org)
The Jupiter Museum of Art in Shenzhen presented a solo exhibition by Guo Cheng Dong "Crossings", from 21 July to 21 September 2024. The exhibition brought together 24 works by the artist, including sculptures and installations from various periods and materials. Crossings showed how the artist balances traditional Chinese elements, realism and contemporary art in his sculptures.
Around the artist, November 2016:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2vXpkBSaAU
EXHIBITIONS
Guo Cheng Dong presents his recent works in the exhibition "Tension/Distorsion" au BAR (Bureau d'Art et de Recherche) QSP Galerie, in Roubaix, from 3 March to 2 April 2023.
https://www.facebook.com/BARRbx/
Guo Cheng-Dong, solo exhibitions include: 2016 Galerie L'oeil du Prince, rue de l'Odéon (6e), and rue Cardinet (17e), Paris ; 2011 Galerie David Bellanger - Paris 8ème, Galerie l'oeil du prince – Paris 17éme.
Guo Cheng Dong participated in "Face 2022" exhibition, organized by the Society of Portrait Sculptors, in the Garrison Chapel, in London, from 8 August to 2 September 2022.
Guo Cheng-Dong participated in numerous group exhibitions since 2006.
HUANG YONG PING
HUANG YONG PING is a French-Chinese contemporary artist. He was a major figure in Chinese avant-garde art in the 1980s. Influenced by Marcel Duchamp and Dadaism, he founded the "Xiamen Dada" movement. The artist, recognized both in France and abroad, was chosen for the Monumenta 2016 edition, at the Grand Palais in Paris.
PROFILE OF THE ARTIST
Huang Yong Ping was born on 18 February 1954 in Xiamen, Fujian province. He graduated from the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (1989). He moved to France in 1989. He passed away on 19 October 2019.
Huang Yong Ping was discovered during the famous exhibition "Les Magiciens de la Terre" at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, in 1989, the year of the Tiananmen Square repression. Huang Yong Ping created meaningful works that were often censored by his country's government.
The artist incorporated different philosophies into his work, both Chinese, such as Chan Buddhism and Taoism, and Western. He created works where cultures coexist and denounced globalisation. In 2006, on the island of Vassivières, at the Centre international d'art et du paysage, on France, he installed a large prayer wheel, similar to those used by Tibetan Buddhists.
In 2000, Huang Yong Ping created a monumental work "Bank of Sand, Sand of Bank", made of 40 tons of sand, cement and water. This was a replica of the old HSBC building in Shanghai.
Tang Contemporary Art in Beijing presented an exhibition by Huang Yong Ping and Shen Yuan, ‘Is Small Still Beautiful?’, from 24 August to 6 October 2024. In addition to Shen Yuan's work, the exhibition showcased the pioneering work of the late Huang Yong Ping and Shen Yuan in the history of contemporary art.
EXHIBITIONS
In December 2021, two years after Huang Yong Ping's death, the Kamel Mennour Gallery in Paris made possible the realization of Huang Yong Ping's and her partner Shen Yuan's final joint project, by organizing a duo exhibition: HUANG YONG PING SHEN YUAN. Is Paris Burning? 2019. In their respective works, Huang Yong Ping and Shen Yuan are committed to investigating the complexity and causes of these 'burning' events in Paris. But the fire is not only burning in Paris, it is everywhere.
On 8 December 2021, a tribute was paid to Huang Yong Ping, who passed away in October 2019, and on the occasion of the exhibition Is Paris Burning? 2019, by Huang Yong Ping and Shen Yuan, at the École des Beaux Arts de Paris, organised by Gallery Kamel Mennour and the Beaux-Arts de Paris.
Huang Yong Ping was present at Art Basel 2022 with his sculpture of cockroaches invading a kitchen, presented by the Kamel Mennour gallery.
EXHIBITIONS
LI CHEVALIER
LI CHEVALIER is a contemporary French-Chinese painter and visual artist. She is part of the new artistic movement born in China, "Experimental Ink". The artist questions the world of forms born of shadow and light.
contact: https://www.lichevalier.com/
LI CHEVALIER (@lichevalier) • Photos et vidéos Instagram
Li Chevalier, French-Chinese artist born in 1961 - Galerie208
NEWS
Ming Gu gallery in London is presenting an exhibition by Li Chevalier, entitled "Unveiled Silence", from 27 October to 4 November 2024.
PROFILE OF THE ARTIST
Li Chevalier was born in Beijing in 1961. In 1980 she joined the University of Foreign Economic Relations in Beijing. She met her husband, a French commercial attaché at the French Embassy in China, and moved to France in 1984. After studying political science (Sciences-Po Paris) and a DEA in philosophy at the Sorbonne (1990), she studied in various art schools in Florence and Paris and obtained a postgraduate diploma from Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design in London (2007). She lives and works between her two studios in Beijing and Paris (Ivry sur Seine).
Li Chevalier works at the crossroads between Europe and Asia. Drawing on her Chinese artistic heritage where landscape painting has a very important place, the artist wants to give a new impetus to this ancient aesthetic by using the means of expression offered by the contemporary art. Li Chevalier has always been in search of beauty: "I want to restore emotion to art by rehabilitating its beauty, far from modern contemporary art which advocates either minimalism or exaggeration" she explains.
Li Chevalier was initially more of a musician than a painter. At the age of 15, she joined the Chinese People's Liberation Army Opera, then in Paris she was a soprano in the choir of the Orchestre de Paris. Music is always a recurring theme in her work. At the beginning her paintings were figurative. It was in 2003, during a stay in Qatar, that the artist discovered Indian ink. She then abandoned oil and gradually turned to abstraction. "With ink, you paint on canvas and not on paper, and you paint in reverse: you start from white and go towards shades of grey. The work is more difficult, because there is no possibility of retouching".
Li Chevalier's compositions are filled with a poetic intensity, with beautiful clouds of white mixed with sand particles, mineral flakes and large dark inks. The undefined outline of her paintings reinforces the meaning of her subject matter. The artist also uses rice paper and calligraphy. The spiritual dimension constitutes the essential value of her works.
Thus she depicts the Japanese "Toris", "spiritual doors to be crossed in order to offer oneself a time of questioning". Li Chevalier is "in search of beauty, troubled by death, on a spiritual quest, silhouettes walking towards the beyond, a question mark on the horizon or a cross reflecting it".
In 2013, as a prelude to a concert conducted by the conductor of the Opera National de Paris, Philippe Jordan, Li Chevalier created a monumental installation at the Beijing Opera House entitled 'Cantabile per archi' by Peteris Vasks, composed of hundreds of string instruments, establishing an encounter between art and music. In 2012, the French Institute of Beijing presented Li Chevalier's 'Stèles de lumière' at the National Library of China, 21 steles made of light boxes covered with lithographs of steles engraved with calligraphy.
Two of Li Chevalier's works have been exhibited since 2011 in the salons of the French Embassy in Beijing. Her works are part of the permanent collection of the National Museum of China, the National Opera of China and the Bernard Magrez Institute, among others. Li Chevalier is a member of the Société Nationale des Beaux Arts (SNBA), the Taylor Foundation and ADAGIP (Society of Authors in the Graphic and Plastic Arts). The artist was awarded the SNBA gold medal for her installation and the ADGP sculpture grand prize in 2014.
As part of the Asia NOW 2022, Li Chevalier and Frédéric Laroque, concertmaster of the Paris Opera, performed a piece orchestrated by Gallery 208.
Li Chevalier participated in the "nuit blanche" at Musée Guimet in Paris on 31 May 2024 with the musical performance by Karol Beffa.
In conjunction with the Venice Biennale 2024, the Museum of Oriental Art in Venice presented a solo exhibition of the work of Li Chevalier "I Hear the Water Dreaming", from 11 May to 15 September 2024. This exhibition, which brought together a selection of some thirty of the artist's major works, was a tribute to Venice, the city that changed her expressive trajectory in the early 1990s.
EXHIBITIONS
In 2004, Virginia Commonwealth University's School of the Arts presented Li Chevalier's first collection of experimental ink paintings "Veiled Silence".
The artist was exhibiting at the Siena Museum Complex in 2018/2019.
Li Chevalier participated in the exhibition "Between Heaven and Earth, Landscapes of the Soul" at the Musée des Arts Asiatiques in Nice from November 2021 to February 2022 and in the online group exhibition "The Impermanence of All Things", curated by her co-founder Lou Anmella-de Montalembert, and presented by OPENART Advisory + Projects until June 26, 2022.
https://www.openartadvisory.com/impermanence-of-all-things-french
Li Chevalier participated in the contemporary art exhibition - La Collection de Bernard Magrez - in Bordeaux, from 19 March to 2 October 2022.
In 2022, the artist also presented an impressive installation in the Arabian desert
Li Chevalier had a solo exhibition at Galerie 208, in Paris avenue Pierre 1er de Serbie, from 3 June to 15 July 2024
Li Chevalier participated in Art Paris Art Fair and Asia Now in 2020 and 2022. Gallery 208 presented Li Chevalier at Asia Now 2022 (20 - 23 Octobre 2022)
Li Chevalier had an exhibition at Focus Art Fair London 2023 within Saatchi Gallery, from 4 to 7 October 2023
BIO/EXHIBITIONS
LI DONGLU
LI DONGLU is a young Chinese artist who has lived in France since 2000.
contact : http://www.lidonglu.com/
https://www.instagram.com/li__donglu/
PROFILE OF THE ARTIST
Li Donglu was born in the Guangdong province, China, in 1982. He graduated from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts (2004). He then continued his studies in France at the Ecole des Beaux Arts de Versailles (2006-2008). In 2009, he was in residence at the Château de Padiès, Lempaut, in the French Tarn department, in association with the Culture & Cultures Festival. He lives and works in Paris.
While his compositions reflect certain impressions of traditional Chinese painting, Li Donglu uses modern techniques such as acrylic on canvas or oil paint. The deep, dark colours chosen by the artist reinforce the mystery that emanates from his paintings. These have evocative names that speak for themselves: Last Minute, Vanities, Human right, Pandora, The desert and peace. In short, Li Dong Lu speaks to us about humanity.
Sublimated by the technique of oil and tempera, Li Donglu's painting reveals biblical echoes: heaven/earth, paradise/inferno, water/fire or purity/impurity. One motif is also very often repeated in Li Donglu's work: the tree. Present in almost all traditions, the cosmic tree embodies "the link between heaven and earth".
EXHIBITIONS
A first exhibition of the artist was organised by the Pandora Galerie Mendes in Paris in 2011.
Li Donglu's latest solo exhibitions include: 2021 "Taking Root", A2Z Art Gallery Paris; 2018 "Zao Wu, at the dawn of chaos", A2Z ART Gallery , Paris, France; 2017 The Nature of the Nature, A2Z ART Gallery, Hong Kong; 2015 Surimpression A2Z ART Gallery, Paris
The artist participates in numerous group exhibitions: 2024 "En Apesanteur", A2Z Art Gallery, Paris ; 2023 ART021 Shanghai ; 2022 Art Paris Art Fair ; Art 021 art fair 2021 in Shanghai ; 2020, A2Z Art Gallery , Paris, France ; 2019 "10 Years already! , A2Z Art Gallery , Paris ; 2018 Asia Now - Paris Asian Art Fair 2018 , A2Z Art Gallery, Paris, ; 2017 Art Central Art Fair Hong kong 2017, A2Z Art Gallery ,Hongkong, China ; 2016 Art Paris Art Fair 2016, A2Z Art Gallery, Paris, Art Central, Art Fair Hong kong 2016, A2Z Art Gallery ,Hong kong, China., Art Stage, Art Fair, Singapore 2016, A2Z Art Gallery ; 2015 China International Gallery Exposition 2015 , 7+1 Luckily you are here, Art project curated by Martina Köppel-Yang, A2Z ART Gallery, Beijing, Nécessité intérieure, Yohann Gallery, Paris ; 2011 China International Gallery Exposition 2011, Middle Space and Bermel Contemporary(Berlin), Beijing, China ; 2010 Pour l'amour de Goya, Galerie EGP, Paris.
MA DESHENG
MA DESHENG is a Chinese artist, poet and performer. He was one of the founding members of the group The Stars, the first avant-garde artistic movement in China, including Ai Weiwei, Huang Yong Ping, Wang Keping and other artists. He is thus an emblematic figure of the Chinese artistic and cultural resistance. In the spring of 1979, he took part in the first unofficial painting exhibition organised in Beijing by the Stars group. In 1985, he left China for Switzerland and, in 1986, at the invitation of the Cartier, CIRCA and Royaumont foundations, he moved to France to settle in Paris.
https://www.instagram.com/madesheng.1952/?hl=fr
NEWS
Galerie Oriane in Munich is presenting a new solo show by MA Desheng "Grande Suite) from 7 November 2024 to 22 January 2025
PROFILE OF THE ARTIST
Ma Desheng was born in 1952 in Beijing. Self-taught, he began his career as a draughtsman and then as an engraver. He then trained with other Chinese artists who are now internationally recognised. For ten years, he was absent from the international art scene after an accident in 1992, forcing him to remain bedridden for two years in hospital. Nevertheless, he painted nearly 4,000 drawings between 1994 and 2002. He has lived and worked in France for over thirty years.
Between abstraction and figuration, his female silhouettes are the real subject of his paintings. They invade his canvases, broken down, in the spirit of a Henry Moore or a Matisse. The simplification of these bodies will give birth to a new aspect of his work, around mineral constructions. In 2002, he started working with acrylic on canvas. From light and diluted washes, he moves on to a solid paint, with a slight relief, as if to give body to these silhouettes. After having depicted landscapes and bodies, he now shows beings of stone. Some believe that "spirituality still underlies his work, and the analogy with Neolithic cairns or Tibetan stone stacks is unavoidable". Ma Desheng has thus always been imbued with Taoist philosophy. In October-November 2016, he presented 'Corps', an unpublished series, at A2Z Art Gallery in Paris. This Body Series tends to continue the artist's research of lines and chromatic compositions, inspired by the master of colours: Henri Matisse. In his work "Portrait of Ma" - a series of self-portraits subtitled by haiku-like phrases taken from everyday life - "faces lined up seem to form masks that stand still in marked or rather underlined expressive caricatures". Ma Desheng presented monumental bronze sculptures (exhibited for the first time) and acrylic felt-tip drawings in his exhibition at A2Z Art Gallery in early 2018. These are depersonalised figures that transcend the human condition and weave the links between the palpable elements (the earth), on which Man stands and grows, and the immaterial elements (the sky), with which Man rises and begins to dream (the sky).
To Ma Desheng, stone is the catalyst of all beings animated by energy, the witnessing support of eternity. This relationship, both physical and sensitive, carries the hope of eternal life: Harmony. This is where the Taoist philosophy on which the artist's thinking is based comes into play. Reflecting on artistic freedom, Ma Desheng is also famous for his sound poems and readings in performances, where the voice plays as important a role as the words.
After five solo exhibitions at A2Z Art Gallery Paris, Ma Desheng presented "White Dreams, Black Souls" in early 2022. The result of the last two years of pictorial research, Ma Desheng's work marked a creative renewal in the artist's career with splendid abstract vinyl paintings - in black and white and grey - referring to his earlier inks on paper, also present in the exhibition.
Ma Desheng is represented by A2Z Art Gallery
EXHIBITIONS
Ma Desheng exhibits worldwide. His most recent solo exhibitions include: 2024 MA' Colours", A2Z Art Gallery Paris, "Wish Upon A Rock", 3812 Gallery, Hong Kong ; 2023, solo exhibition of Ma Desheng at Centre Pompidou, Paris, from 21 October 2022 to 23 February 2023 ; 2022 "White Dream, Black Souls", A2Z Art Gallery Paris; 2020 "Au Coeur des Pierres", A2Z Art Gallery Paris.
Ma Desheng exhibited at Guangzhou K11 Art Mall in Chinea from August 9 to October 27 2024, as part of the group exhibition entitled "8220 km", organised by A2Z Art gallery and MOORDN Art Connexion
Ma Desheng was one of the Chinese artists exhibiting in the group exhibition "Ink in Motion, A History of Chinese Painting in the 20th Century", at Cernuschi Museum, Paris, from 21 October 2022 to 19 February 2022
Ma Desheng participated in Art Basel HK 2022, presented by 10 Chancery Lane Gallery.
He participated with Danhôo and Bao Vuong, in the group exhibition presented by A2Z Art Gallery at the citadel of Calvi, from July 3 to August 31, 2021
The artist participates in numerous group exhibitions: Art 021, represented by A2Z Art Gallery, Shanghai, China, Art Paris Art Fair 2022, 2020, represented by A2Z Art Gallery, Paris, Asia Now Paris Art Fair 2020, represented by A2Z Art Gallery, Paris, Taipei Dangdai Art Fair, represented by A2Z Art Gallery, Taipei Nangang Exhibition Center, Taipei
EXHIBITIONS
RU XIAO FAN
RU XIAO FAN is a contemporary artist, born in China during the cultural revolution - at the time of the hundred flowers, an important subject for the artist - who has lived in France since 1983.
https://ruxiaofan.com/
https://www.instagram.com/ruxiaofan/p/DARC2Y5oKbD/
PROFILE OF THE ARTIST
Ru Xiao Fan was born in Nanjing in 1954. He graduated from the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Nankin (1982) and the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris (1986). He was a guest artist at Casa Velasquez in Madrid in 1988 and 1990. He has lived and worked in Paris since 1983.
After his arrival in France in 1983, Ru Xiao Fan started to make his first paintings with Chinese ink. "At that time, I was looking for my way. I was trying to establish a link between my learning of Chinese calligraphy and the history of Western art," explains the artist. From 1996 to 2000, Ru Xiao Fan produced his Hundred Flowers series, 100 oil paintings, in reference to the artistic and political censorship during the Cultural Revolution, which forced him to leave China. The artist invents his own floral language. His paintings show flowers as anthropomorphic, in groups or as extensions of the human body. From 2004 to 2009, Ru Xiao Fan created another series entitled Bubble Game, always in connection with the situation and evolution of China. Bubble Game is a series of hyper-realistic still lifes in which toys, faces and bubbles accumulate. The painter began this series at the time of the economic explosion in China, which he discovered in 2005, when returnîg to his country for an exhibition at the Shanghai Museum of Contemporary Art. Ru Xiao Fan stages the desires we have for objects, at all ages and to the point of indigestion from overconsumption.
Since 2013, the artist has focused on the human condition. "It's like I've arrived in another, more meditative dimension. I paint still lifes under a bell, in a deceptively realistic way, like trompe l'oeil. I thought of a phrase from a philosopher who said that when God looks at humans thinking, he laughs." In his series Crown (symbol of power) the crown is systematically suspended above small theatres of characters. A metaphor for the threat, the control that power represents.
From 8 July to 21 September 2020, the Guimet Museum in Paris gave Ru Xiao Fan 'carte blanche'. The artist imagined for the MNAAG a pantheon of 72 delicate divinities sculpted in Jingdezhen porcelain. The base of these sculptures is made of firing bowls from the Song kilns (owens) that the artist discovered by chance ten years ago in a market in the city of Jingdezhen.
"Allemonde", a solo exhibition at Red Zone Arts gallery in Frankfurt, Germany, from September 22 to November 15, 2022. "presented an imaginary kingdom. A composer and a painter was a surprising combination of two interventions (an opera and a series of paintings) but which in fact take you to the middle of the forest to follow them in their aesthetic research so beneficial to think and describe the world and perhaps understand unique poetic impressions.
https://red-zone-arts-gallery.com/ruxiaofan-allemonde/
Among his latest works presented at Galerie 208 in 2023, a tribute to Velasquez based on flowers and vegetables. The artist often reproduces this floral motif, in reference to his Chinese roots. The artist also presented delicate bamboos in gilded bronze, mounted on a support or in a frame, as well as delicate divinities sculpted in Jingdezhen porcelain.
EXHIBITIONS
Ru Xiao Fan exhibits in Europe as well as in China.
Latest exhibitions: 2024 "Mouvement", galerie Oriane, Munich, Germany ; 2023 "Les Saisons des Bambous", Espace Culturel ICICLE, Paris, Ru Xiao Fans' solo show, Galerie 208 Paris; 2022, "Allemonde", solo exhibition at Red Zone Arts gallery in Frankfurt, Germany
Ru Xiao Fan was one of 10 contemporary Chinese artists based in France to be exhibited at the Musée national de l'histoire de l'immigration in Paris from 10 October 2023 to 18 February 2024, in an exhibition entitled "J'ai une famille" ("I have a family").
Ru Xia Fan participated in Asia Now 2022 and 2023, presented by Red Zone Arts gallery.
Ru Xiao Fan participated in the Révélations Fair in Paris (Grand Palais Ephémère) in June 2022.
BIO/EXHIBITIONS
SHEN YUAN
SHEN YUAN is a contemporary artist of Chinese origin. In 1985, she was part of the Xiamen Dada group, exploring avant-garde art under high political pressure. After the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989, she joined her husband, the artist Huang Yong Ping, in Paris.
contact : Galerie Mennour
PROFILE OF THE ARTIST
Shen Yuan was born in 1959 in Xianyou, China. She graduated from the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts. She has lived in Paris since 1990.
At the beginning of 1989, Shen Yuan exhibited alongside 184 other avant-garde artists at the "Chinese Contemporary Art Exhibition" at the National Gallery of Fine Arts in Beijing. Since then, she has settled in Paris and her work has revolved around the difficulty of integration, particularly due to the language barrier. In 1994, she exhibited one of her most powerful works, "Lose your spit": large tongues of ice installed in a cellar that gradually melted, revealing their skeleton.
Shen Yuan's installations are spectacular and aesthetical, but at the same time they are also delicately sensitive. For her, "art means rebirth in a new body". There are two major elements in her work: the tongue and the hair. "Language has many levels of meaning and possibility. In art, there is a metaphorical sense of language, i.e. the physical and the spiritual. In my work, it is more about the spiritual," says the artist. Shen Yuan has also greatly magnified the long hair, a traditional image associated with women, using long cotton threads to describe it.
In March-April 2017, Shen Yuan had a retrospective exhibition entitled "Without Wall" at the Beijing Minsheng Art Museum. One of her works in this exhibition "I was seen, I was not obvious", was a metaphor for the problem of immigration in Europe. Blue-grey light boxes on the floor represented blue eyes and several lifeboats at the end of their rope.
Tang Contemporary Art in Beijing presented an exhibition by Huang Yong Ping and Shen Yuan, ‘Is Small Still Beautiful?’, from 24 August to 6 October 2024. In addition to Shen Yuan's work, the exhibition showcased the pioneering work of the late Huang Yong Ping and Shen Yuan in the history of contemporary art.
EXHIBITIONS
From July 2021 to January 2022, Shen Yuan presented "Fragments de mémoire" in the Buddha Hall at Musée Cernuschi, Paris: a way of exploring a theme that is dear to her, that of the relationship between memory, intimacy and everyday objects. She chose to present a huge comb, an object that indeed tells a story.
From 10 November 2023 to 24 December 2023, the Shanghai Being Art Museum presented the exhibition "The Image of Memory: Leiko Ikemura and Shen Yuan". The exhibition featured works by Shen Yuan and Japanese artist Leiko Ikemura. Through these works of art, it seeked to open up a dialogue across cultural and geographical boundaries, raising questions about memory, immigration and female identity.
In December 2021, two years after Huang Yong Ping's death, the Kamel Mennour Gallery in Paris made possible the realization of Huang Yong Ping's and her partner Shen Yuan's final joint project, by organizing a duo exhibition: HUANG YONG PING SHEN YUAN, Is Paris Burning? 2019.
WANG DU
WANG DU is a Chinese contemporary artist who has lived in France since 1990. He creates spectacular installations.
PROFILE OF THE ARTIST
Wang Du was born in December 1956 in Wuhan, Hubei province, China. He trained at the Guangzhou Fine Arts School. In the 1980s, he became a professor of architecture and became involved in the avant-garde. He has been a professor at the University of Paris VIII, the Beaux Arts de Brest and the Ecole des Beaux Arts de Paris. He has been living in France since 1990; he lives and works in Alfortville, near Paris. Wang Du is represented by the Laurent Godin Gallery.
Wang Du states, "I am media, I am reality, I am image". "I am the spokesman of reality and the masses," he adds.
The artist is the author of spectacular installations. He dissects newspapers, examines television and surfs the Internet. He selects the most surprising images, linked to politics, showbiz or popular culture, and recycles them in 3D. He produces massive resin sculptures with provocative postures, surprising expressions and garish colours; he uses plaster: "because we deal with information, it must be heavy to do, heavy to digest". He blithely mixes the social anecdote with the major political event, thus highlighting the telescoping world of images; he denounces their power and their power of social, intellectual and economic manipulation.
Wang Du gained international recognition at the 1999 Venice Biennale with an installation of 11 plaster sculptures entitled Flea Market. On a 9-metre long table, Monica Lewinsky, Yasser Arafat and Patrick Poivre d'Arvor stood side by side, a sort of reflection of the media telescoping of the time. As part of the Year of China in France in 2004, the Palais de Tokyo hosted the last stage of the Wang Du "parade", a tour/exhibition of the artist's installations shown in several French cities at La Criée in Rennes, the Rectangle in Lyon, and the Abattoirs in Toulouse, Nantes and the Vancouver Art Gallery.
At the end of 2016, the Laurent Godin 2 gallery in Paris 13th presented Wang Du's "La Clinique du monde": the visitor was invited to enter a labyrinth of white veils that divided the exhibition into eleven rooms like so many hospital wards.
From October 7, 2017 to January 7, 2018, Wang Du presented "Disposable Reality (detail) 2000-2017", in Dijon, a work around the limited duration, which has become the norm for everything in our daily environment. Fifteen plaster sculptures - suspended from the ceiling - explored the consumerist notion of the disposable through various objects of the consumer society: a sports motorbike, a mobile phone equipped with rocket-like engines, a tin can or a woman wearing boxing gloves.
From 14 July to 23 August 2018, Wang Du with Chinese artist An Xiaotong were the subject of an exhibition entitled "Landscape" at Tang Contemporary Art, Beijing Space II. The exhibition focused on landscape and showed how Wang Du and An Xiaotong understand the contemporary qualities of ancient landscape images in the context of our globalised society. For these landscapes, Wang Du took up the technique used in his previous work to translate 2D images into 3D images. He selected three classical ancient Chinese landscapes: Wang Ximeng's One Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains and Yan Wengui's Pavilions Along Mountains and Rivers from the Northern Song period, and Wu Yuanzhi's Red Cliffs from the Jin Dynasty, transforming them into 3D images and using glass.
In June 2022, the works in his series entitled 'Les Modes' - presented at the large-scale sculpture exhibition in the public spaces of the city of Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg, in 2022, entitled 'Nothing is permanent', represented a gigantic ball of newsprint alluding to mass-circulation newspapers. These sheets of paper, whose meaning unfolds in several stages, gain the stature of real monuments to accuse the dysfunctions of the media throughout the world.
EXHIBITIONS
Wang Du exhibits in France and in Asia. His latest solo exhibitions include: 2018, Tang Contemporary Art (Wang Du & An Xiaotong Dual-Solo Exhibition), Beijing; 2017-2018 "Disposable Reality (detail) 2000-2017", Consortium Museum, Dijon, France; 2016 "La Clinique du monde", galerie Laurent Godin, Paris 75013; 2012 "Image Absolue, Armory Show, New York; 2011, "Image Absolue", galerie Laurent Godin, Paris 75013
Wang Du participated in a large-scale exhibition of sculptures in the public spaces of the city of Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg, entitled 'Nothing is permanent', from 17 June to 11 November 2022
Group exhibitions: 2022 "Nothing is permanent", Esch sur Alzette, Luxembourg ; 2020-2021 "Alain Gautier" by Wang Du, "Regards hors champ et paysages", Agnès B., La Fab, Paris 75013
WANG KEPING
WANG KEPING is a contemporary sculptor of Chinese origin. Wood is one of his favourite materials. In 1979, he was one of the founders of the first Chinese artists' group Les Etoiles (Xing Xing), which also included Ai Weiwei. He was a redguard in 1966. He is internationally recognized on the contemporary art scene.
According to Artprice, Wang Keping had a turnover of € 270 k in 2023.
contact : https://www.wangkeping.com/
https://www.instagram.com/wang_keping_sculpture/
NEWS
Wang Keping is participating in the exhibition Faire Corps - Fondation Villa Datris L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, from May 19 to Nov 3, 2024
PROFILE OF THE ARTIST
Wang Keping was born in Beijing in 1949. In 1984 he was expelled from China and went into exile in France, where he has lived since then and in Paris since 1988. Wang Keping is a self-taught artist.
Wang Keping has a passion for nature and the body. His sculptures are essentially based on three themes: the woman, the bird and the couple. Wang Keping's work is often compared to that of artists such as Auguste Rodin or Henry Moore and especially Constantin Brancusi - an affiliation of which Wang Keping is proud.
The artist made his first works with wood in 1978. His first works, Silence (1978), a sculpture that has become emblematic of the resistance to the aesthetic canons advocated by the government (the sculpture represents a one-eyed face, deformed by a screaming mouth smothered by a cylinder), and Idol (1979), a caricatured bust of Mao, will force him into exile. They were exhibited at the Centre Pompidou in 1989.
After his arrival in France, Wang Keping abandoned his political subjects but not his living material, wood, to represent mainly the female body. Wang Keping's sculpture is both figurative and abstract, primitive and refined, using the carnal nature of wood, underlined by the patina of fire. But he is constantly evolving, using bronze to perfectly show the veins of the wood. The artist is on an aesthetic and spiritual quest inspired by Taoist philosophy, the sculptures of the Han dynasty and the art of rural China.
The artist's most characteristic works today are his sculptures of voluptuous women, with oversized breasts, "between the grotesque and the erotic", according to some; they could be seen in the exhibition "The Flesh of the Forests", at Musée Zadkine in Paris in 2010. "People see this and they say 'ah, but you like women with big breasts,'" the artist confided. "But in life, it's the opposite. In sculpture, you have to have volume, you have to exaggerate. This is evidenced by his two monumental figures: "Youth" and "Maternity" exhibited in the Parc Monceau in front of the Cernuschi Museum as part of the "Chinese Artists in Paris" exhibition in 2011. "A strong sexual current also defines his male figures, and sometimes hybrids like "Adam and Eve" (2006), where an erection and the lips of a female sex cohabit. The artist's work 'Maternity' entered the permanent collection of the Musée Cernuschi in 2013, a donation from the sculptor. The exhibition presented by Galerie Nathalie Obadia in Brussels in 2018 was thus entitled 'Simplicity, Nature, Sensuality'. In 2016, the Aktis Gallery organised an exhibition "China Black", dedicated to Zao Wou-Ki and Wang Keping, two immigrant artists, as part of Asian Art in London.
In September 2020, Wang Keping unveiled a huge sculpture (4.20 metres high) on the art trail of the Domaine des Étangs, in Massignac, Charente, French province. For this performance, he sculpted the body of a woman from a piece of hundred-year-old red oak.
In the spring of 2022, in the gardens of the Rodin Museum in Paris, Wang Keping worked before the eyes of the public on four monumental sculptures in progress, in the vast space of the undergrowth. By cutting whole tree trunks directly, he created sensual forms, full of emotion and poetry.
EXHIBITIONS
The Zürcher Gallery has been promoting the artist's work since his arrival in France.
Wang Keping's latest solo exhibitions: 2024 Wang Keping, olo exhibition at 10 Chancery Lane gallery from 20 March to 11 May 2024, Duos - Château de Chambord ; 2022, Wang Keping has taken over the sculpture garden of the Rodin Museum in Paris to make it his studio from Tuesday 3 May to Sunday 5 June 2022, in partnership with Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Métamorphoses, galerie Obadia Paris, from 5 January to 12 March 2022
The 16th contemporary carte blanche of the Musée national des arts asiatiques - Guimet, Paris, was given to the Chinese artist Wang Keping, from 23 November 2022 to 6 March 2023.
The Domaine de Chambord in France invited the Chinese artist Wang Keping to take up a residency, followed by an exhibition, from 15 October 2023 to 17 March 2024.
PAST EXHIBITIONS
WANG YAN CHENG
WANG YAN CHENG is a contemporary artist of Chinese origin. He is known as a great master of abstract painting - between abstraction and lyricism - like his famous predecessors Zao Wou-Ki and Chu Teh-Chun. His works are 'a true symphony of matter, colour, light and writing'.
In April 2014, a painting of, the artist broke the record of $701,325 at Sotheby's Hong Kong.
Artist's blog http://expertsgraphiques.free.fr/wang/index.php
PROFILE OF THE ARTIST
Wang Yan Cheng was born in Guangdong Province, China, on 9 January 1960. He studied at the Shandong School of Art from 1978 to 1981, where he was trained in Western art. He graduated from the Shandong Academy of Fine Arts (1985). From 1986 to 1988 he was a researcher at the Central Academy of Fine Arts of China in Beijing. From 1991 to 1993 he studied art at the University of Saint-Etienne, France. In 1995 he was a visiting professor at the Shandong Academy of Fine Arts and in 2003 at the Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts. He lives between France and China.
"Everyone can undertake a journey in the painting of this artist. One can read in it the mystery of the universe," writes art historian and critic Lydia Harambourg on the website dedicated to the artist. "Wang Yan Cheng transcribes the secret breath, the fleeting waves to express the immensity of the sky and the ocean [...]. "Wang Yan-Cheng, a force that spurts towards the canvas in long convulsive spasms", we read in Azart, in 2005. "We tend to put Wang Yan Cheng in the wake of Zao Wou-Ki and Chu Teh Chun. However, if we look closely, there is a big difference between these three. Zao Wou-Ki's abstraction is in the search for an elsewhere, a space of signs that would be immemorial, out of time, even out of space; Chu Teh Chun's abstraction has made it a very important literary background. Despite its appearance, Zu's abstraction is in line with another classical Chinese poetic idea, which reaches a paroxysm of expression in the best T'ang poems. Wang's abstraction is physical and visual above all", analysed Dong Qiang, poet and professor at Peking University, in 2007, in an article entitled 'The magician who knew how to remove the horizon'. Among the many colours chosen by the artist is grey, which may remind us of Northern China, with its oil fields, where his parents went into exile for political reasons. In his paintings, one can also see his Chinese calligraphic heritage, which he mixes with Western techniques.
In 2007, Wang Yancheng created a monumental painting for the Beijing Opera House.
In August 2024, the artist presented new canvases in Japan with a new approach to abstraction.
EXHIBITIONS
Wang Yan Cheng participated in the first Chinese Contemporary Art Fair in Beijing in 1989. Since 1993, the artist has been exhibited both in France and abroad.
Recent solo exhibitions include: 2024 Wang Yancheng's World - Contemporary Art, Tokyo National Museum, Tokyo, Japon ; 2022 Peintures, Galerie Lelong & Co., Matignon, Paris, France ; 2021 Paysages, Pinault collection, in the Chapelle Laennec, Kering headquarters, Paris, 18/09/2021 - 19/09/202120 Micro e Macro, Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome, Italy, Cosmogonie di colori, Accademia delle Arti del Disegno, Florence, Italy
Wang Yan Cheng participated in Art Basel, presented by Galerie Lelong, in June 2022.
PAST EXHIBITIONS
WANG YU
WANG YU is a contemporary Chinese artist living in France since 2001. The artist sublimates her painting work by a very personal technique which gives a somewhat unreal and pure aspect to her characters, especially nudes. She is also an engraver, an important technique in the structuring of her work.
contact : https://www.wangyu.fr/
PROFILE OF THE ARTIST
Wang Yu was born in Zuzhou (Liangsu) in China in 1973. She studied painting at the Nanjing School of Fine Arts (1991-1994) from which she graduated (1995). She also obtained a Master's degree in engraving. After teaching at the Shanghai School of Fine Arts, she moved to Paris in 2001 where she obtained a DEA in plastic arts from Paris I Sorbonne (2003). She lives and works in Paris/Montreuil.
Wang Yu studied Western painting at the Beaux Arts de Nanjing - Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Matisse - an influence that is evident in her work. The artist uses a painting technique developed by herself with the help of a major manufacturer, a "skin tone", a mixture of acrylic mediums. The artist paints "human-angels staged in a heavenly and earthly world in search of the life they desire". "Each individual has arrived beautiful as an angel, carrying with him his ideals and desires", says Wang Yu, "on earth, humanity takes over". The artist's colour work gives an almost immaterial aspect to these often naked angels, "the flesh appears soft, translucent, satin-gloss, thick and alive". The timelessness of Wang Yu's characters is one of the characteristics of her work. If some of her subjects are purely fictional, others have a symbolic meaning, even political for some. For example, "The Angel of Tahrir Square" refers to the events in Cairo, Egypt, during the Arab Spring revolution. The painting depicts an injured demonstrator being evacuated from Tahrir Square. Her subjects can also be erotic, such as 'Clouet', a depiction of Gabrielle d'Estrées in the bath (1595), or religious.
In her work ‘35°C (2023), she uses a reference to the detail of a nude in the Louvre to visualise the relationship between heat and the human body. The work was presented in the group exhibition ‘Métamorphoses’ at Perspective galerie in Paris, from 12 August to 21 September 2024.
EXHIBITIONS
Wang Yu has already had several solo exhibitions and participated in various group exhibitions. The most recent are: 2024 Wang Yu participated in the group exhibition "Métamorphoses" at Perspective galerie in Paris, from 12 August to 21 September 2024 ; 2023 "L'humanité à découvert, en douceur", galerie Géraldine Banier, Paris ; 2018 "À mains nues", Galerie Lazarew, Paris; in 2017 "Wang Yu, Le Mystère", Galerie Zürcher, Paris, "Wang Yu, Histoires d'Anges", Fondation Ricard, Paris, Galerie Teodora, Paris
PAST EXHIBITIONS
WONG WA
WONG WA is a contemporary artist of Chinese origin who has lived in France since 1984. His art is multiple between sculpture, painting, calligraphy, ceramics, paper cuts, collages.
contact : https://en.wong-wa.com/
https://www.instagram.com/_wongwa_/?hl=fr
PROFILE OF THE ARTIST
Wong Wa was born in the coastal province of Fujian in 1953. He graduated from the Fujian School of Fine Arts. In 1978, he decided to leave China for Hong Kong where he remained until 1984. While making advertising posters, especially for the cinema in Hong Kong, he also deepened his knowledge in the field of art, especially calligraphy and seals. In 1984 he decided to emigrate again, to France. There he studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts de Paris and the Ecole du Louvre. He currently lives and works in Paris. He also teaches calligraphy and Chinese painting in various schools and institutions (Musée Guimet, Paris, Créteil, Angers).
In 1980, Wong Wa began to produce his first series of sculptures. "Wong Wa's sculptural work is made up of major chapters. Almost always under the sign of the series, it is declined in bestiaries, anthropomorphic sculptures, masks, murals, totems, solitary horsemen who find life in wood, metal, plaster, ceramics, concrete"; he also tears or cuts paper which he assembles in interesting collages. "One of the great founding series of Wong Wa's work is that of the Lone Rider, which he has produced in many forms and in different materials. The myth of the lone rider dates back to the Tang period. Along with Cervantes and his hero Don Quixote, it has become one of the world's most famous literary myths. The horseman is also a symbol of the Western world for Wong Wa. During his travels in Europe, he was struck by the large number of equestrian statues in towns and villages. In his 'Ancient History' series of paintings, the artist mixes characters from China's past with current world politics, using a caricatured form. His landscapes are inspired by both China and the West, while the brushwork and use of ink are traditional Chinese. Wong Wa creates masks: in wood, plastic, concrete and rusty iron for his sculptures, and in paper cut-outs for which he is inspired by traditional opera or theatre booklets. He creates elegant sculptures from bicycle parts. He also creates a 'Chinese puzzle' game with sculptures in flamboyant red. Finally, Wong Wa shows his presence in France with his Série papiers découpés et impressionisme and his Paris en papier.
Wong Wa's art shows an incessant back and forth between East and West, between figurative and abstract representation, between the past and the present. In his works, he "combines his research in the field of calligraphy (in terms of ideograms and techniques) with a conceptual research that links him to modern art". The artist has learned from the great masters in the West, while always remaining steeped in the rich cultural, literary, aesthetic and philosophical tradition, and in particular in the ancient philosophical current of Taoism. To date, Wong Wa has created 6,000 works.
YAN PEI-MING
YAN PEI-MING is a contemporary Chinese artist who is widely recognised internationally. He has lived in France since 1983.
Yan Pei-Ming occupied the 61st place in the Artprice Report's Top 1,000 Contemporary Artists Sold at Auction - from 2000 to 2019 - with a turnover of $57,029,680m.
He ranked 3806th in the top 5000 of the world's best-selling artists at auction (Sales 2023)
http://www.yanpeiming.com/
NEWS
Yan Pei-Ming is one of 8 artists selected to create contemporary stained glass windows in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, according to a press release from the French Ministry of Culture on September 4, 2024.
In 2025, Yan Pei-Ming is scheduled to have an exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego, USA.
PROFILE OF THE ARTIST
Yan Pei-Ming was born in Shanghai in 1960. In 1983, he came to France and settled in Dijon. He studied for five years at the École des Beaux Arts in Dijon (1981-1986), then at the Institut des Hautes Études en Arts Plastiques in Paris (1988-1989). In 1993, he was a resident at the Villa Medici in Rome. He has lived in Dijon since 1982. He works in his studio in Dijon and Ivry-sur-Seine.
Yan Pei-Ming is a portraitist with a keen interest in current affairs. He grew up under the Cultural Revolution: “When I was a child, I had two dreams: to draw cinema posters or to make funeral portraits. Today, I've merged them... I started painting at 13, large-scale portraits for propaganda purposes, of soldiers, workers and of course Mao Zedong, the Great Helmsman”.
Today, Yan Pei-Ming has become a master of the large-format portrait: “The large format is for the viewer to enter the painting”, the artist says. The artist still draws his inspiration from everyday events, he admits. In his work, he also explores themes such as death and filiation, illustrated by works such as “L'Enterrement à Shanghai” (funeral of the artist's mother). Yan Pei-Ming uses oil and watercolor, and strong colors such as black, red and white.
Yan Pei-Ming in his studio painting “A funeral in Shanghai” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bWSEKB0u0o
Yan Pei-Ming recently painted a portrait of the writer Marcel Proust for the Villa du Temps Retrouvé in Cabourg, on show since March 2023. The artist sought to capture Proust's spirit as he began writing A la recherche du temps perdu.
A gigantic portrait of Professor Gustave Roussy by Yan Pei-Ming was unveiled on June 27, 2024 in the lobby of the Institut Gustave Roussy.
EXHIBITIONS
Yan Pei-Ming's latest solo exhibitions: 2024 “Kung Hei Fat Choi Massimo de Carlo, Hong Kong; 2023 “Painting histories”, Palazzo Strosi, Florence; 2022, “Wild Game”, Massimo de Carlo, Milan.
A new exhibition devoted to the life and work of Yan Pei-Ming was presented at the Musée Unterlinden in Colmar from May 19 to September 6, 2021. The exhibition, entitled “Yan Pei-Ming - In the name of the father”, brought together four decades of the painter's career.
Yan Pei-Ming exhibition at the Palais des Papes and Collection Lambert, Avignon from June 26 to September 26, 2021, and at the Schlossmuseum, Linz in 2022.
Yan Pei-Ming took part in the group exhibition “Beyond Color: Black and White in the Pinault Collection”, at the Couvent des Jacobins in Rennes, until August 29, 2021.
In 2023, Hennessy worked with Yan Pei-Ming for the Hennessy X.O. collection. Yan Pei-Ming created a monumental 6 x 3.5-meter painting entitled “la grande course”: it depicts the rabbit, surrounded by the bestiary of the zodiac, in a race evoking freedom and unity in diversity. This exceptional painting inspired the limited editions of Hennessy V.S.O.P, Hennessy X.O and Hennessy Paradis cognacs for the Lunar New Year.
Yan Pei-Ming took part in the group exhibition “Pier Paolo Pasolini Tutto è santo. Le corps politique” at MAXXI (Museo Nazionale delle Arti del XII century), Rome, from November 16, 2022 to March 23, 2023.
Yan Pei-Ming was one of 10 contemporary Chinese artists living in France, exhibited at the Musée national de l'histoire de l'immigration in Paris from October 10, 2023 to February 18, 2024, in the exhibition entitled “J'ai une famille”.
PAST EXHIBITIONS
YANG JIECHANG
YANG JIECHANG is a contemporary Chinese artist. The artist was invited to exhibit his works in Paris in the Centre Pompidou exhibition in 1989, "Les Magiciens de la Terre". He then decided to settle permanently in France.
With an annual income of €523,927, Yang Jiechang ranked 275th/500th in Artprice's ranking (Sales revenue) of the art market in the world in 2013/2014. In April 2014, a work by the artist "Untitled" sold at Sotheby's Hong Kong for HK$500,000.
contact: https://jeannebucherjaeger.com/fr/artist/yang-jiechang/
NEWS
Hundred Layers of Ink, the largest work in Yang Jiechang’s renowned Hundred Layers of Ink (1989–1999) series, is on public display in the huge M+ Museum in Hong Kong since October 9, 2024
PROFILE OF THE ARTIST
Yang Jiechang was born in 1956 in the city of Foshan, near Canton. He graduated from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts (painting) in 1982. From 1982 to 1988, he was a professor at the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts. Since 1989 he has lived in Paris and Ittlingen, Germany. In 1992-1993 he was a fellow of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York, and in 2003 he was in residence at the Kunst Werke in Berlin, supported by the French AFAA and the German government.
Taoism has given Yang Jiechang a mental and spiritual language from which he draws to build his work. He has chosen to renounce all representation, allusion and symbolism. He paints with Chinese ink and glued rice paper or Balorsian paper as an overlay; he uses mineral colours. After graduating from the Fine Arts School, Yang Jiechang studied Taoism with masters, in contrast to his communist teenage years; he was a member of the red guardians as a child. Today, Yang Jiechang's work continues to mix traditional Chinese modes of representation with the aesthetics of Western movements such as minimalism, conceptualism and abstraction. While his work is inspired by the West, he uses typically Chinese materials such as silk, porcelain and Chinese ink. He has produced up to 3000 reproductions of human bones or skulls, painted on porcelain. In many of his works, Yang Jiechang offers the viewer a position that aims to transcend duality: there is neither traditional nor contemporary, neither eastern nor western, neither politically correct nor subversive, neither beautiful nor ugly, neither good nor bad. The awareness of the existence of an intermediate position, of an alternative vision that goes beyond the dialectical perception of the world, marked Yang Jiechang's way of thinking from an early stage and is his strategy to relate to reality and life in a deeper way.
Since his emigration in 1989, Yang Jiechang has been working on a series of inks. In 2016, ARNDT Gallery, Singapore, presented his work in an exhibition entitled '100 Layers of Ink'.
By the end of 2021, the Galerie de la Manufacture de porcelaine de Sèvres, in Paris, presented a series of 11 pieces born of the collaboration between the Manufacture's craftsmen and Yang Jiechang. The Tale of the 11th Day exhibition offers a dreamlike journey to discover the treasures of porcelain.
From 6 July to 24 October 2022, the Musée Guimet in Paris gave carte blanche to Yang Jiechang. His work "Tale of the 11th Day" (2011), an 18-metre long painting on silk mounted on canvas, was presented in the 4th floor rotunda. https://www.guimet.fr/event/carte-blanche-a-yang-jiechang-From 21 May to 31 August 2024, Alisan Fine Arts Hong Kong presents the fifth solo exhibition featuring Yang Jiechang as an associated exhibition of Le French May Arts Festival in 2024 in Hong Kong. This exhibition showcases Yang's "Flower and Bird Paintings" spanning from 1988 to 2023, including the premiere of his "Soy Sauce Drawing" series in Hong Kong. Additionally, it features previously unseen works from his "Tale of the 11th Day" series and the renowned "Hundred Layers of Ink: For Bada" series.
http://www.alisan.com.hk/en/exhibitions_detail.php?id=238
EXHIBITIONS
Yang Jiechang's solo exhibitions: 2024 "The Last Tree", Alisan Fine Arts gallery, Hong Kong ; 2022 "Carte blanche to Yang Jiechang", Guimet Museum; Tale of the 11th Day, ceramics, at the Galerie de Sèvres, Paris, from 16 October to 18 December 2021.
To celebrate the Chinese New Year 2024, the Year of the Wooden Dragon, Yang Yongliang created a porcelain decanter for Hennessy, handcrafted by Bernardaud.
The artist had a duo exhibition with Liang Shaoji at Suzhu Wuzhong Museum in China, in early 2023: "The Quill is mightier than the Sword".
Yang Jiechang participated in Chengdu Biennale 2023 "Time Gravity"
Yang Jiechang participated in ASIA NOW 2022, presented by the Jeanne Buecher-Jaeger gallery. On this occasion, AiKa (an art-related consulting platform), presented Possible (2022), a set of unique non-fungible token calligraphies (NFTs) by Yang Jiechang.
The artist participated in Paris Art Fair 2022 and 2023 at Grand Palais Ephémère, Paris, presented by Jeanne Bucher Jaeger gallery.
PAST EXHIBITIONS
ZAO WOU-KI
ZAO WOU-KI is a contemporary artist of Chinese origin. He is considered one of the most illustrious representatives of lyrical abstraction. He has been a painter, a painter-cartoonist, an engraver, a lithographer and an illustrator. In May 2017, at Christie's Hong Kong, his work "29.09.64" (1964) reached a world record price of KHD 15.8 million (USD 19.7 million). New record in 2018 with "And the earth was without form" (1956) at Poly Auction's Spring 2018 auction: 1.8 billion RMB (234,677,513.98 €). On 27 May 2018, Zao Wou-Ki fetched HK$69.8m ($8.9m) at Phillips Hong Kong for his painting "04.01.79" (1979) and thereby dominated the day's sale. At Christie's on 26 May 2018, his painting '14.12.59' achieved $176.7m ($22.6m). Zao Wou-ki had the highest sales at Christie's and Phillips Hong Kong in May 2019. His 1987-1988 Triptych, Homage to Matisse and Manet, sold for HK$178,000,000 (nearly US$23m) on 25 May 2019 and the 8 paintings by the Franco-Chinese artist auctioned at Christie's together fetched $50m, or 45% of the total sale turnover.
A tryptich by Zao Wou-Ki "05.06.80" was sold USD 12,260,858 at Christie's HK on September 26, 2024.
In 2023, Zao Wou-Ki ranked 25th in Artprice's Sales Revenue ranking, with a turnover of $ 77 millions $. He ranked first on the Hong Kong market.
http://www.zaowouki.org/
PROFILE OF THE ARTIST
Zao Wou-Ki was born in Beijing on 1 February 1920. In 1935, at the age of 14, he passed the entrance exam to the Hangzhou School of Fine Arts, where he studied Western techniques (drawing, oil painting, perspective) and Chinese techniques (traditional painting, calligraphy) for six years with Chinese and European teachers. After six years of study he was appointed reader. In 1948 he decided to settle in Paris, in the Montparnasse district. In 1980 he was appointed professor of mural painting at the École nationale supérieure des arts décoratifs (1980-1984). Pierre Soulages, Joan Miró and Henri Michaux were among his friends. He died on 9 April 2013 in Nyon (Switzerland).
Through his work, Zao Wou-Ki succeeded in synthesising the technical means of his extreme Eastern heritage with the plastic and poetic ambition of Western lyrical abstraction. He has indeed moved to abstraction using Chinese inks and calligraphy. "Zao Wou-Ki, painter of elemental forces and the emergence of being, a life spent probing and scrutinising forms and meaning by throwing East and West together, a seeker of the absolute who encloses in colour the landscapes of the spirit, a shaman of initiations and metamorphoses," says Dominique de Villepin, former prime minister, on the website of the Zao Wou-Ki Foundation.
Zao Wou-Ki's work is multifaceted in its expression: oils, watercolours, prints, ink, ballet sets for Roland Petit, ceramics, stained glass windows for a church in the Indre et Loire department, washes, lithographs, illustrations for books and bottles of Champagne, etc. He also executed monumental works on commission, notably for his friend and fellow architect I.M Pei.
EXHIBITIONS
The Jiushi Art Museum on the Bund in Shanghai presented "Echoes of Verses: The Poetic Palimpsests" by Zao Wou-Ki, from 29 June to 13 October 2024.
From 2 March to 26 May 2024, Les Franciscaines (convent) in Deauville presented a monographic exhibition dedicated to the work of Zao Wou-Ki : "les allées d'un autre monde"
The China Academy of Art (CAA) in Hangzhou presented a major centennial memorial exhibition on Zao Wou-Ki, The Way is Infinite: Centennial Retrospective Exhibition of Zao Wou-Ki, from 20 September 2023 to 20 February 2024.
Marlborough Graphics in New York presented 'Zao Wou-Ki: Prints', from 9 Novembre 2023 to 13 January 2024.
From 17 June to 30 December 2023, the Musée de l'Hospice Saint-Roch in Issoudun, France, showed a selection of nearly 200 works by Zao Wou-Ki.
From 14 April to 1 December 2023, the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris presented, as part of its permanent collection, a remarkable ensemble of works by Zao Wou-Ki that bring together two prestigious donations made to the museum in 2018 and 2022 by Françoise Marquet-Zao.
From 14 April to 1 December 2023, the Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris presented, as part of its permanent collection, a remarkable ensemble of works by Zao Wou-Ki that brought together two prestigious donations made to the museum in 2018 and 2022 by Françoise Marquet-Zao.
A commemorative exhibition by Wu Dayu et Zao Wou-Ki was organized at Putuo Cultural Pavilion in Shanghai (15 October - 10 November 2023)
The previous major exhibition dedicated to Zao Wou-Ki "Space is Silence" was organised by the Musée d'Art Moderne in Paris from 1 June 2018 to 6 January 2019. It brought together for the first time a large number of large-scale polyptychs and paintings from major European and Asian collections.
https://www.connaissancedesarts.com/evenement/zao-wou-ki-la-recherche-de-la-lumiere/
Dixon Gallery & Gardens à Memphis Tenessee, Usa, presented 'Zao Wou-Ki – Watercolors and Ceramics', in 2023.
Villepin Gallery in Hong Kong presented "Zao Wou-Ki: The Eternal Return to China", from December 1st 2021 to March 22nd 2022.
Hôtel de Caumont-Centre d'Art in Aix en Provence, France, presented from 19 May to 10 October 2021, "il ne fait jamais nuit", an exhibition of nearly 90 works by Zao Wou-Ki, from 1935 to 2009.
Mayoral Paris presented the exhibition "The Youngest Among Us All: Zao Wou-Ki à propos de Joan Miró", an unpublished dialogue between Joan Miró (1893-1983) and Zao Wou-Ki (1920-2013), from May 1st to July 31st 2021.
PAST EXHIBITIONS
ZHAO BIRU
ZHAO BIRU is a contemporary Chinese artist who arrived in France in 2004. She creates abstract compositions that show a great mastery of graphics.
https://www.zhaobiru.com/pages/home
PROFILE OF THE ARTIST
Zhao Biru was born on June 3, 1974 in Changshu, in the province of Jiangsu, China. She studied at a very young age in the Fine Arts section of Nanjing High School. She obtained a master's degree in graphic design at the Institute of Design of Jiangnan University, Wuxi (1998). After a period of teaching at Jinling Keji University in Nanjing, she started studying at the Shanghai School of Fine Arts in 2003. In September 2004, she arrived in France where she joined the École supérieure d'Art et de Design d'Amiens. She graduated with a D.N.S.E.P (Diplôme National Supérieur d'Expression Plastique) in 2007. She currently lives in Paris.
Zhao Biru uses mixed media on paper for her mainly abstract ink paintings. She is one of the best Chinese graphic designers: as early as 1998, two of her posters were selected for the Beijing Design Museum and for the catalogue of the collective exhibition "the 100 best Chinese graphic designers of the 20th century". In 2006, the Editions des Beaux Arts Populaires de Shanghai devoted a book to her work on ink. She says she is inspired by Chinese artists such as Si Lin Fengniam and Liu Haisu. She is also interested in the work of Marcel Duchamp, Pierre Soulages and Antoni Tàpies.
In her latest exibition at the LooLooLook gallery in Paris "Au-delà de l'Encre", from 2 to 22 November 2023, the artist presented delicate ink paintings, most of them very graphic, in black and white, Fleurs de rêve or Traces de lumière, some with hints of colour.
EXHIBITIONS
Since the end of the 1990s, Zhao Biru has participated in numerous exhibitions in China and Paris. In 2003 she presented her first exhibition at the Art Scene China Gallery in Shanghai.
Her solo exhibitions include: 2024 "Au-delà de l'encre", Institut Confucius de Bretagne (France) ; 2023 "Au-delà de l'encre", galerie Looloolook, Paris, Zhao Biru retrospective exhibition, galerie LookLookLook; 2021 ZHAO BIRU Exhibition, Galerie Looolook, Paris; 2016 Solo exhibition at Galerie Encre de Chine, Paris; 2014 Institut RICCI, Paris; 2010, Galerie du Pont Rouge, Paris 75004; 2009, Liu Haisu Museum, Shanghai, Galerie Naco, Shanghai; 2007, Galerie Arteconte, 75006 Paris.
Zhao Biru has also participated in numerous group exhibitions including: 2017 Exhibition of Zhao Biru's new works, Galerie Encre de Chine, Paris, Exhibition "Troposphere" devoted to the works of Chinese artists settled in France after the year 2000, Saint Denis, France; in 2016 Maison de notaires de Vitry sur Seine, "Venus De L'est, Inspirés Par L'ouest-Chinese artists in France", 5thBiennale d'art contemporain d'Allauch, France; Exhibition "Belle Chine", Shanghai Library; 2014 'Mouvement, peinture chinoise contemporaine' Espace Jano Centre Sèvres 75006 Paris, Galerie Area, 75010 Paris, "Young Art Tapei", Taipei, "Art Karlsruhe", Germany ; 2013 Exhibition "Encre" at the Encre de Chine gallery (collaboration with galerie peinture fraîche), Paris, "Chine Art" 2nd, Mairie du 13eme arrondissement in Paris ; 2012, Atelier Visconti, 75006 Paris, Galerie Les Stèles, Huelgoat, France ; 2011, Galerie Peinture Fraîche, 75007 Paris, "Grand marché d'art contemporain", Paris; 2011, 2010 and 2009, Art en Capital, Grand Palais, Paris; 2009 Exhibition "Ink" at the Liu Haisu Museum in Shanghai, Galerie Athena et Antichambre, 75013 Paris.