GROUP EXHIBITION

Born in Xi’an, China, AN Xiaotong recovers images found on websites, blogs and chat rooms to translate them into plastic form. Through the pictorial series ‘Transversal of Utopia’, which issues here a more organic subject, like a return to the sources after having crumbled the digital world, the artist is interested in the engine of the locomotives that she sees penetrating the city. Fascinated by the gears, the artist represents them seen from the sky as if she were placing herself outside the insatiable frenzy of the city and of progress.

Shoko FUJIMORI belongs to the third generation of post-war Japanese artists and releases her reflections on today’s society through oil painting. Intrigued since her adolescence by social relations in Japan and by the confrontation between what the artist calls ‘private opinion’ and ‘public opinion’, the artist underlines and normalises the duality between what one lets appear and what one is: a concept at the antipodes of Japanese social functioning. She uses her attraction for the study of skin to open the doors to a universal realistic world in which human beings, alone, in groups or in families, come to life in the face of nature.

Influenced by Japanese pop culture artists such as Takashi Murakami, Nara Yoshitomo or Mr..., Chihiro NAGASHIMA conjures up ‘fragments of the world’ stored directly in her mind and then paints them on canvas. Questioning her vision of the world, imaging her doubts and articulating around beauty and contemplation, her work features children in front of colorful and narrative backgrounds taken from everyday life and Japanese folklore. Chihiro NAGASHIMA’s romantic painting highlights the reflections of a youth seeking its place in a world that is constantly changing and evolving.

After a career as a Fashion Designer across New York, Hong Kong and Sydney, Jono TOH plunges us into a painting approaching geometrical abstraction and punctuated by a narrative of continuous lines tending towards figuration. An important part of his creative process is to give the audience the opportunity to explore a childlike imagination within us, giving the work infinite meaning. A plastic playful vocabulary mixing circles, ovals and curved lines melodiously intertwines according to mathematical rhythms. Through his paintings, Jono Toh guides us in a personal reflection that awakens our senses giving us the opportunity to create in our eyes, a joyful unique work.

Yuyelai’s painting questions the complexity of human relationships. Nourished by both Chinese and Japanese culture, the artist feels out of step with human society and seeks to identify the real nature of man between ‘reason’ and ‘animality’. To protect herself, she uses the symbol of the umbrella, an indispensable object specific to Asian culture. Used to shelter from the rain as well as from the sun, the umbrella represents for her, her attachment to Asia and her roots. In her oil paintings, where the gesture stretches the material, this everyday object takes on the role of a shield creating a refuge for her characters from nature but also from the world around them. ‘She is on a journey to find a true human being.’