Li Chevalier exhibits from May 3 to 22, 2023 at the Grand Hotel Intercontinental in Bordeaux, an 18th century building with a neoclassical-inspired facade. The artist presents a series of photographs printed on aluminum or on canvas, enhanced by hand.
It maintains a special link with the city of Bordeaux. Indeed the artist has already exhibited at the Center d’Art Contemporain Base Sous-marine in 2014, participated in Bordeaux Art and Design 2022 (BAD+) and one of his works was acquired by the Bernard Magrez Institute.
Li Chevalier Franco-Chinese artist, was born in 1961 in Beijing. She graduated from the Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design London Fine Arts section in 2007 as well as from Sciences Po Paris [CEP Promo 86]. She also obtained a DEA in Political Philosophy from Paris Sorbonne in 1991.
Since 2011, two major paintings by the artist have adorned the reception room of the French Embassy in Beijing, alongside the works of Zao Wou-Ki. Navigating between Asia and Europe for more than three decades, Li Chevalier embarked on a journey of exploration of ink painting.
She transforms her workshop into a veritable “laboratory” of deconstruction and reconstruction. It strives to bring forth a new chapter in the thousand-year history of ink painting, in an innovative way.
Li Chevalier works on large format or monumental canvases rather than rice paper, incorporating a textured surface (pigments, shavings, minerals, sand, paper collage and calligraphy).
Li Chevalier embarked on the quest and expansion of all possible expressive powers of ink painting. She minimizes the use of brushes, magnifying the expressionist quality of the lyricism of water. Li Chevalier likes to explore the fluidity, the subtlety of ink and wash.
She avoids realistic representations without pushing her art to total abstraction. It adopts naturally curved shapes rather than hard angles. Gray and flowing and transparent strokes, evocative of waterfalls, both controlled and uncontrollable, can be seen as a metaphorical language of fate.
