Li Chevalier
Li Chevalier (simplified Chinese: 诗 蓝; Pinyin: Shī Lán; born March 30, 1961 in Beijing ) is a French artist and painter. In 1986 she acquired French citizenship. Your work moves at the interface between Europe and Asia.
Li Chevalier is a member of the Taylor Foundation and the ADAGP (Société Des Auteurs dans les Arts Graphiques et Plastiques, an association of authors from the graphic and visual arts in France). Since 2010 she has organized monographic exhibitions at the Museo d'Arte Contemporenea di Roma (Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome), the Chinese National Museum of Fine Arts, the Today Art Museum in Beijing, Today Art Museum and the Shanghai Art Museum.
Her works are now part of the permanent exhibition of the National Art Museum of China (also known as NAMOC) and the Chinese National Center for the Performing Arts. In addition to the paintings of two other French-Chinese artists, Zao Wouki and Chuh Teh Chun, two of her most important works have been decorating the walls of the French embassy in China since 2011. In 2014 she received the gold medal of the SNBA (Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, a French artists' association) for her installation and the ADAGP Grand Prix for sculpture. Li Chevalier is best known for her experimental painting, which is the result of a fusion of western media and components of ancient Chinese art. Thanks to her installations and her very personal style of staging, she is one of the most famous multimedia artists.
biography
Li Chevalier settled in France in the 1980s. Between 1986 and 1990 she completed a master's degree at the Institute for Political Studies in Paris. She then studied political philosophy at La Sorbonne University in Paris . This was followed by postgraduate studies under the direction of Louis Sala-Molins and Robert Misraho. Given the dramatic impact of the cultural revolution on themselves and their contemporaries, the detour of studying politics and philosophy seemed inevitable.
Li Chevalier received her artistic training in the nineties, initially during various study visits to Italy (including at the Institute for Art and Restoration in Florence). In France, she took part in the master's courses of the French painters Thibaut de Reimpré and Pierre Henry. In 2003 she was admitted to the SNBA. She is one of the representatives of the SNBA who exhibited one of the largest art events in France as part of the art event "L'Art en Capital" in the Grand Palais in Paris.
In 2003, Li Chevalier made his way to London to perfect himself at the Atelier Dali of the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design . She then enrolled at the art college and completed a year of study in 2007 under the direction of Stephan Williams. In the same year she won a competition which enabled her to exhibit her works at the summer exhibition of the Royal Academy of Arts (Royal Academy of Arts in London). The director of the academy discovered Chevalier's work and became one of the first London art collectors to collect her work.
Then in 2008 she returned to China. The famous Chinese art theorist M. Penfeng, Vice-Chairman of the Aesthetic Research Center of Beijing University and Chairman of the Chinese Pavilion for the 54th Venice Biennale , advocated Li's participation in the Chinese delegation. Unfortunately, this proposal was rejected because of her French nationality.
Main exhibitions
Monographic exhibitions
The artist's last monographic exhibition took place in 2017 at the Museum d'Arte Contemprenea di Roma. In December 2004, Virginia Commonwealth University's School of the Arts dedicated a monographic exhibition to Li Chevalier. There a collection of experimental ink paintings was shown for the first time, which today is considered a special feature of their style. A monographic exhibition by Li Chevalier was also held in 2006 at the Byam Shaw School of Central Saint Martins College of Art in London. Since 2010 a total of three major retrospectives by Li Chevalier have been exhibited: At the National Art Museum of China (also known as Namoc) in Beijing in December 2010, then at the Today Art Museum in Beijing in May 2010 and then at the Shanghai Art Museum in September 2011. Works have been produced since 2010 shown by her in the permanent exhibition of the National Art Museum of China.
Under the auspices of the Mayor of Bordeaux Alain Juppé and the Deier Organizing Committee for the 50th anniversary of Franco-Chinese diplomatic relations at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2014, the Bordeaux underwater base presented “L'Art du Croisement” (the art of mixing), a monographic Collection of the artist. Thereafter, the artist's paintings were added to the permanent collection of the Institut Bernard Magrez.
Group exhibitions
In 2007, Li Chevalier won a competition and was then allowed to exhibit her work at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Various international art fairs exhibited her paintings, such as the International Art Fair London (2007), the International Art Fair Glasgow (2008), the International Art Fair of the North (2008), the International Art Fair Shanghai (2008), the International Art Fair Beijing (2011) and the National Art Gallery of Qatar Al Bida in Doha (2003). In 2007 and 2011 she was one of the representatives of the SNBA for “L'Art en Capital” (The essential art) at the Grand Palais in Paris.
Her other artistic events also include participation in the International Sculpture Exhibition and the installation Open in Venice, the presentation of her works in the exhibition “Art pour la Paix” (Art for Peace) at the UNESCO headquarters in several exhibitions at the Wuhan Art Museum in China (2010), the Jin Zhi Jian Museum in Beijing (2010), the Huanties Art Museum (2009), the Shang Shang Art Museum in Beijing (2010), the Columbia University Art Gallery in the USA, in the Korean Cultural Center in Beijing, in the New Age Gallery in the City of Arts in Espace 789 in Beijing, in the Astley Gallery in Sweden and in the Art Museum of the Academy of Saint Petersburg (2015). In Paris, the SNBA dedicated an exclusive room in the Carrousel du Louvre to Li Chevalier for their installation Stèle de lumières , (light steles) hommage à Victor Segalen .
In October 2015, she took part in the Vide et Plein (Full and Empty) exhibition organized by Maison Bleu Studio . Gérad Wuriguera, a critic of the exhibition, wrote about her work: “Here a kind of melancholy becomes evident, a misleading distance, but mainly a real control. These serious and mysterious images, which reflect nature, are above all an evocation, but this evocation of the quintessence of nature, which belongs only to its author. Ultimately, however, Li Chevalier did not succumb to the temptation to build a bridge between East and West: She created a world, her own world ”.
Art style
Ink drawing on canvas
Encre et Entre (Indian ink and intermediate)
In the field of tension of ever increasing cultural globalization, the Chinese art scene divides into two antagonistic tendencies. On the one hand, the intensification of identity isolation and, on the other hand, the clear orientation towards the West with its artistic language: American Pop Art and European realism or surrealism. Li Chevalier has lived between Asia and Europe for three decades, but she is one of those who chose a third path. She completed her training in the two most important cultural centers in Europe: In Italy, a country where classicism continues, and at Central Saint Martins in London, which is known for its avant-gardeism. Chevalier ventures into hybrid terrain and speaks a language of coming together.
The French sinologist Francois Jullien wrote in his article Encre et Entre (Indian ink and between) about Li Chevalier's work: “'Encre' (Indian ink), a peculiar artistic language, originated in the millennial Orient. 'Entre' (between), a spatial connection between two shores, the Orient and the Occident, a temporal dialogue that connects the past and the present. Li Chevalier uses the fluidity of Indian ink (as opposed to the 'plumpness' of oil painting) and the ambiguity of forms in a semi-abstract language. With the additional use of other materials and a revolution of the grassroots, she tries to intensify the lyrism of the Indian ink. She works on canvas and uses pigments, fragments of minerals, sand, paper and calligraphy. She also experiments with a wide variety of formats, from tiny to huge, to square or rectangular shapes. Your relationship to productions can be described as conquering the entire exhibition space and Li Chevalier turns it into a real installation. "
In terms of symbolism, landscape paintings by Li Chevalier, who describes herself as an heiress of the painting school des lettrés, are an excuse to express her “philosophical astonishment”. Without giving any indication of religious affiliation, the artist paints the " toris " (doors that are placed in front of temples to represent a boundary between the materialistic world and the place of meditation): A lonely bench without any support or a cross, which, lost on an island in the middle of the sea, bends to the wind. The titles of their works further reinforce the symbolism. Vide de l'autre (emptiness of the other), Solitude qui habite l'Homme (loneliness inherent in man), Au-delà de l'horizon (Beyond the horizon) or Symphonie du destin (symphony of fate). Symphonie du destin has been on view in the reception room of the French embassy in China since 2011. The work of art shows a fleeting landscape with figures that convey the feeling of being swallowed up by the horizon, the “transition to the hereafter”. The presence of floating Breton or Corsican menhirs suggest the same fascination as Victor Segalen's for steles, these hewn stones that adorn the earth, facing the horizon like marker stones and that embody the passage of time.
Beauty and humanistic ideal
In her childhood, Li Chevalier experienced the human madness of the cultural revolution first hand. The destruction of beauty went way beyond art, invading every corner of the privacy of Chinese citizens. In 1990 Li Chevalier dedicated her thesis in philosophical politics at the University of La Sorbonne Paris to the following topic: The human being as a protective shield - the indispensable political morality. In 2007 she completed her master's thesis in the third cycle of studies in fine arts on the subject of art and beauty at the Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design in London. The school is known for its avant-gardism, here the violation of aesthetics is the predominant tendency. At the graduation exhibition, she showed two paintings entitled A la recherche de la beauté perdue . During various conferences at the Bernard Magrez Cultural Institute in March 2015 and the Political Science Institutes in Paris and Le Havre in March 2016, Li Chevalier repeatedly stated that she was firmly convinced that the strongest emotions arose in the prism of the aesthetic emotions of her work. In addition, the aesthetic emotion needs a deep bond with the value of life in order to be realized.
The artist tirelessly recites this passage from the Cinq Méditations (Five Meditations) by Francois Ceng. In her opinion, it is the most beautiful synthesis of beauty and humanistic ideal. The general rejection of these two values has left deep marks on her. “We could imagine a universe consisting only of the truth, without the idea of beauty finding a place in it… Then it would be a world of 'robots', not a world of life. The Nazi concentration camps showed us a terrible picture of this world ... "
In 2014, Li Chevalier took part in a dialogue conference with Peng Feng, a Chinese art critic, Pan Gaong Kai, director of the Academy of Fine Arts of China and Luc Ferry , a French philosopher, on “The emergence of modern aesthetics and the question of the criterion of ' Nice part.
Installations and productions
Li Chevalier's exhibitions and installations differ in their staging, their specific spatial composition, which has a very theatrical effect. The inclusion of light, environment and sound is in the foreground, but the involvement of the visitors in the event also plays an important role in creating a sensory experiment that connects the painting and the viewer.
Cantabile per archi
Cantabile per achi (literally song for string instruments) is a monumental installation made up of a forest of string instruments. These violins, violas and cellos, "made in China", were decorated with calligraphy and ink strokes in their raw condition. For this installation, the artist was inspired by the Symphonie Cantabilé pour archi by the Latvian composer Peteris Vasks. This work evoked in Li Chevalier the image of a forest of instruments ("Archi") in the vast nature, permeated by bloodcurdling, desperate screams that highlight the tragic dichotomy between the composer's humanistic idealism and the devastating reality of the historical dramas that are People had to endure represents. In this installation, Li Chevalier created a resonance, she created shadows that come from two very distant countries, but which have suffered similar blows of fate. It shows a kind of connection between two spirits, between two art forms.
This installation was created on July 3, 2013 as part of Croisement at the National Center for Performing Arts in Beijing. This center is a very symbolic place as it was designed by the French architect Paul Andreu. Cantabile per archi served Phillipe Jordan, the conductor of the Paris National Opera, as an introduction to his first concert in China. With Li Chevalier's Forest of String Instruments, she made Beijing's opera her own. Thanks to her “visual symphony” she built a bridge between art and music. Frederic Laroque, first solo violinist at the Paris National Opera, initially improvised in the midst of the installation and then played a violin concerto accompanied by the National Symphony Orchestra of China under the direction of Philippe Jordan. This installation was also exhibited at a ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of the French-Chinese diplomatic relationship of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs at the Bordeaux underwater base. There she was accompanied by a concert by the Quartet of the Paris Opera . It was shown again in 2017 at the Museo d'Arte Contemporenea di Roma (MACRO Roma) in the form of a multimedia installation with light-sound synchronization and a film projection.
Between music and visual art
Li Chevalier's childhood was strongly influenced by musical education, so as a child she was very interested in music. At the age of 15 she was selected to be trained as a singer for the Opera of the Army of the People's Republic of China. To this day, music remains her second passion alongside her work as a visual artist. Under the direction of Arthur Oldham and Semyon Bychkov, she was soprano in the choir of the Paris Orchestra and also sang at numerous concerts under the direction of the French conductor Huges Reiner.
Since 1991 she has worked with musicians from the Paris Opera. She staged two concerts by the first solo artist of the Paris Opera, Frédéric Laroque, with the former Chinese Radio Symphony Orchestra and the Chinese Film Symphony Orchestra. The monographic exhibition of Chevalier Peindre la musique (Painting of Music), organized in December 2004 under the auspices of the Qatar Foundation, included a performance by the Quartet of the Paris Opera. In 2010 her monographic exhibition Symphonie Visuelle was organized, which was dedicated to the Latvian composer Peteris Vasks . For the opening of Li Chevalier's exhibition L'Art du Croisement (The Art of Mixing) in July 2014, the quartet of the Paris Opera played in the underwater base in Bordeaux .
Music is one of Li Chevalier's favorite subjects. Her painting J'entends l'eau rêver (I hear the water dreaming) was exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2007, and she dedicated it to the Japanese composer Takemitsu . She dedicated the painting Symphony of Destiny (collection of the French Embassy in China) to Beethoven. Other pieces of music that have inspired her work include: The Spring Offering by Igor Stravinsky (private collection in the USA), Transfigured Night by Arnold Schönberg and Two-Part Inventions by Johann Sebastian Bach . The installation by Li Chevalier, exhibited in the Museum of Fine Arts in Shanghai in 2011, was deeply influenced by the violin concerto Black, white and in between by the Flemish composer Dirk Brossé .
Light steles
On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the publication of Stèle (Stele) by Victor Segalen , the French Institute of Beijing showed Les Stèles de Lumières (Light Steles ) by Li Chevalier in the Chinese National Library. This installation consists of eighty-one steles in the form of glowing boxes. These boxes are covered with lithographs of calligraphic steles from various centuries. These etched stone steles are kept in the Stele Forest Museum in Xi'An . Segalen chose the number 81 for the first publication of his book. It corresponds to the number of plates in the last circle of the third terrace of the altar in the Temple of Heaven in Beijing. The panels were glued to a metal base and lit from the inside. These poetry steles in the Chinese landscape, just like the stone stelae at the entrance of temples or the stelae set up, pay tribute to the memory of the deceased, good people or who pay tribute to a poet. They show someone passing the steles the trace of a light, the shadow of a soul that has disappeared.
In the artist's eyes, these steles embody a civilization, an art form. They are not so much witnesses of the impermanence of life, but rather of the deep human pursuit of infinity. This striving is one of the favorite themes in Li Chevalier's work. She often uses collages of lithographs, of Chinese steles and of shadow figures, which remind Celtic nature lovers of Breton menhirs.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Li Chevalier . In: MilionArt Kaleidoscope - art magazine - stayinart . August 16, 2017 ( stayinart.com [accessed January 16, 2018]). stayinart.com ( Memento of the original from January 17, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Li Chevalier - Trajectory of Desire | MACRO. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on January 16, 2018 ; accessed on January 16, 2018 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Li Chevalier. Retrieved January 16, 2018 (French).
- ↑ www.celesteprize.com - Celeste Network - Italy: li Chevalier solo exhibition opened at the National Art Museum of China. Retrieved January 16, 2018 .
- ↑ Exposition: li Chevalier, l'art du croisement . In: Artistes Contemporains . September 16, 2015 ( artistescontemporains.org [accessed January 16, 2018]).
- ↑ Public Events | United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. Retrieved January 16, 2018 .
- ^ Li Chevalier art news. Retrieved January 16, 2018 (French).
- ↑ Wikiwix's cache. Retrieved January 16, 2018 .
- ↑ Vide De L'autre, 2015 - Li CHEVALIER. Retrieved January 16, 2018 .
- ↑ Solitude Qui Habite L'homme, 2016 - Li CHEVALIER. Retrieved January 16, 2018 .
- ↑ Le Figaro portrait li Chevalier. Retrieved January 16, 2018 .
- ↑ Collection by the Institute Bernard Magrez - LI CHEVALIER . ( lichevalier.com [accessed January 24, 2018]).
- ^ Li Chevalier's hybrid vision spans two continents- - LI CHEVALIER . ( lichevalier.com [accessed January 24, 2018]).
- ^ The well known French philosopher; former French Minister of Education Luc Ferry will give two lectures in Beijing Sept. 2014 - LI CHEVALIER . ( lichevalier.com [accessed January 24, 2018]).
- ↑ Bernard Magrez: Cantabile per archi, 2014. Une installation de Li Chevalier (base sous-marine de Bordeaux). February 16, 2015, accessed January 16, 2018 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Chevalier, Li |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French artist and painter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | March 30, 1961 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Beijing |