Ma Kelu

Ma Kelu - Breath and Void

For his first exhibition in France, Ma Kelu's paintings are presented in the Gallery of Mural Paintings at the City of Architecture and Heritage.

Ma Kelu, born in Shanghai in 1954, belongs to a generation of artists who, from the 1970s onward, positioned themselves on the margins of the official frameworks. A founding member of the No Name group, he settled in New York at the end of the 1980s, where his understanding of action painting and the color field led him toward gestural, atmospheric, and pared-down abstraction.

Presented on the same plane as the medieval frescoes and their architectural setting, Ma Kelu's painting resonates, in form and content, with the religious figures that float on uniform skies.

In Ma Kelu's work, motifs are like wind-shaped clouds and figures defying gravity. The shapes of his paintings primarily render the passage of time perceptible, as in the works of Judith Reigl or Hans Hartung.

Although it immediately recalls the floating universe of late Monet and the frontal stance of Matisse, Ma Kelu's abstract language resists analysis. His universe, at times dark, at times luminous, remains always unstable and teeming. Teeming with signs, it becomes, for the duration of observation, an immersive and hypnotic sky where our gaze threads its way through the filaments of paint. Its mystery remains.

In the manner of the medieval frescoes in the Gallery of Mural Paintings of the City, Ma Kelu invites us to experience a visual chaos. Within each work, and also from one painting to the next, repetition defines a playing field where each form finds its singularity in movement. The choice of monochrome or, more rarely, bichrome emphasizes the repeated and modulated gesture, which functions as the agent of metamorphosis.

Ma Kelu's works are today in numerous institutions and museums, such as Tate Modern, Guangdong Art Museum, the M+ Art Museum, or the National Museum of China. With the support of the François Cheng Endowment Fund.