Category: Culture

This week, a few friends from the bay are in town… Theosky and the Wangsta. The primary reason is Theosky’s pimp grandfasha is none other than Chu Teh-Chun a skilled painter and artist. Chu is showing some of his more recient works of art (2005) at the Marlborough Gallery on 57th st from May 17th through June 17th. We were all invited to the grand opening and I do suggest you check this out… good modern stuff.

Adam and I asked both “what do you think about when you paint and what should we see in your work”. In true artist response… “Just look and you will understand”.

Here’s something from Marlborough regarding the artist (press – pdf)and some photos of the opening and art work are posted here:

Chu Teh-Chun Gallery 2006
CHU TEH-CHUN
Paintings
Marlborough Gallery
May 17, 2006 – June 17, 2006

The Directors of Marlborough Gallery are pleased to announce that an exhibition of paintings by the Paris-based Chinese master Chu Teh-Chun will open at the gallery on May 17 and continue through June 17, 2006. This will be Chu’s first show in the United States and at Marlborough Gallery and thus will provide a rare opportunity to view the extraordinary canvases of this renowned artist whose recent work was the subject of an extensive exhibition at the Shanghai Fine Arts Museum, in October and November of 2005.

Featuring over twenty-five paintings, mostly dating from 2005, with numerous diptychs, triptychs and two quadriptychs, this exhibition will be a symphony of color, a celebration of “cosmic music, as described by Jean-Paul Desroches, Chief Curator of the Mus’e national des Arts asiatiques-Guimet in Paris, in his introductory essay to the exhibition catalogue. Brilliantly colored abstract paintings deeply rooted in Chu’s long history with Eastern and Western painting; they are the result of a passionate and dedicated artistic journey. The strength, energy, and scale of his work as well his steadfast longing for the artistic heights of the two cultures set apart the work of Chu Teh-Chun in modern and contemporary Chinese painting.

Chu was born in 1920 in Jiangsu Province, China, in a family of doctors and collectors of Chinese painting. In 1935, the same year as the painter Zao Wou-Ki, Chu joined the Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou, the first contemporary school of painting in China. A few years after graduation Chu became a professor at the National Central University of Nanjing and finally opted for a “Western painting style” which at the time in China meant a choice for the Western media of oil and of color.

In 1949 Chu commission for the Taiwan National History Museum on the theme of History of China since Sun Yat Sen (Sun was the founder of the First Chinese Republic in 1911). Shortly thereafter, in 1955 Chu moved to Paris where he studied the French language, attended classes at the Acad’mie de la Grande Chaumi’re, and immersed himself in the masterpieces exhibited at the Louvre.

After beginning in a figurative style, the work of Nicolas de Sta’l (1914-1955) inspired Chu to meditate on non-figuration and on the necessity of “vision” rather than “representation,” which is indeed an essential principle of Chinese painting. His aim, as with other important Chinese painters of his generation, was to “unite” Eastern and Western concepts.

Desroches in his essay to the catalog vividly describes Chu’s dramatic artistic development shortly after his arrival in Paris and his exposure to lyric abstraction:

Probing the endlessness of the sky, searching the depths of the earth, he discovered a vast sphere that freed him from paralyzing constraints of both the East and the West. He entered full force into an unrestricted universe, far from expressionist anger or calligraphic speculations, where space was not limited from any perspective and there were no rules, except those dictated by his own intuition. From them on, in the secret and silence of his studio, works of art could develop and evolve in an entirely original style.

By 1958, Chu had his first solo exhibition in Paris, at Galerie du Haut-Pav, and thus began a prolific and successful career, now documented in numerous monographs and studies of his work. In 1997, Chu Teh-Chun was the first artist of Chinese origin to be elected to the prestigious Acad’mie des Arts et Lettres, in Paris.

The subject of numerous exhibitions at both galleries and public institutions throughout Europe and Asia, Chu’s work can be found in the permanent collections of over fifty museums worldwide. Among them are the following: Biblioth’que Nationale, Paris; Fonds National d’art contemporain, Paris; Mus’e d’art moderne de la ville de Paris; Mus’e d’art contemporain de la Ville de Li’ge, Belgium; Olympic Museum, Lausanne, Switzerland; National Museum of History, Taipei, Taiwan; Taipei Fine Art Museum, Taiwan and the Taiwan Museum of Art, Taichung, Taiwan.

An illustrated catalogue with an introduction by Jean-Paul Desroches, Chief Curator of the Mus’e national des Arts asiatiques-Guimet, Paris, will be available at the time of the exhibition.