Ors et excentricités minérales. The painted work, 2009-2024

Twelve Western and Chinese authors have contributed their texts to accompany the works of this singular artist, who has spent two decades working intensely, relentlessly and disconcertingly. Qu Qianmei (1956, Rui’an, Zhejiang province), moves from ink painting on traditional paper to a complex technique born of the pleasure of observing the patina of materials and the passage from layers of lacquer to sanding, leading to nuances that are sometimes unique. Not forgetting the dark resources of burnt wood or the grinding of oyster shells into a pearly tone. These are the magical ingredients of his thick polychromy, made unique by the presence of kaolin powder, Hunan cinnabar or red wood.

Calligraphy and wash painting at the Rui’an Normal School, then oil painting and tempera at the Central Institute of Fine Arts in Beijing, become a unique type of mural painting. A milestone: 1986, Paris, adoption of other rules of survival and life, bringing her closer to Chinese artists such as Wang Yancheng, who introduced her to the abyssal world of abstract art. In August 2022, during an interview in her Paris studio, she said: “I felt an affinity with those who, like me, felt the need for communion and the same conceptual intensity. Another milestone was the Tapiès exhibition in Paris in 2010, a real trigger”. The recent period of blacks releases monochromes, but also lithographs and serigraphs limited to 20 copies, produced on the Yachang presses in Shanghai on Japanese papers resistant to dense as well as fluid materials. A reminder of the tones used by so-called eccentric Chinese painters, like the outrenoirs of Soulages “who ventured into another intensity and abstraction”.

The alternations between blacks, thick polychromies and golds refer to those of Sienese painting whose backgrounds covered in gold leaf said how much the artist translates the divine perfection of which he is a significant part.

Christophe Comentale

Texts by Christophe Comentale, Christophe Ripa, Jean-Luc Chalumeau, Shi Liren, Lin Mingjie, Philippe Staïb, Shui Tianzhong, Tao Yongbai, Xie Qiang, Xu Hong, Yu Haiyuan, Zhang Yuan
Design : Sun Chengan
ISBN : 978-2-37440-205-5
EAN : 9782374402055