Les cinq couleurs de l'encre" exhibition, June 8, 2022

The course in five stages: technique, material, color, subject and gesture

The proposed route starts from the dual technical heritage carried by contemporary Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean and Japanese artists: the "ink technique" (墨法) and the "brush technique" (筆法). Although these techniques - or methods - are seen as complementary, the quality of a work in ink is often judged through the handling of the brush, a tool associated with the practice of calligraphy.



In a second stage, the tour focuses on a series of artists who abandon the brush to return to the original meaning of ink as matter, found in the etymology of the character mo 墨 (the black 黑 above the earth 土).



Associated with black, ink is also known in early Chinese aesthetic treatises for its "five colors". The number five is intended to be exhaustive; it echoes the cardinal directions and their centers, the five elements, in a civilizing and totalizing ambition. Later treatises, often by practitioners, refined the enumeration of ink qualities, proposing more concrete nuances such as, in addition to black and white, dry and wet, dense and light.



In order to avoid the ideal of a sterile, timeless art lettré, the exhibition incorporates the approach of artists who capture figurative and current subjects by taking hold of reality through black, in the form of photographs, xylographs and prints. Finally, the gestures of the artist who, with the tip of a brush or the arm of his body, blacken their works with ink, will bring this journey to a close.

Curatorial choices and the question of values

Modern calligraphy and contemporary ink art in the Far East are readily confused with "abstract expressionism". Our selection of works strives to overcome this global vision of the history of modern art, which eclipses the cultural specificity of its expressions. Another pitfall we have sought to avoid is the reduction of all contemporary art in East Asia to a binary dialogue between tradition and modernity.



Pictorial expression in the Far East shares its tools, materials and techniques with the art of writing. Thus, a veritable hierarchy of pictorial genres is based on the degree of calligraphic virtuosity displayed in a work, accompanied by rhetoric about the superiority of monochrome ink over color. The intention here has been to include certain aspects of visual production usually excluded by the aesthetic values of the literate elite, while taking account of the terminology and categories present in the classical traditions of calligraphy and painting in East Asia.



This project is experimental in several respects: the exhibition lasts only one day, it is conceived by a teacher from Inalco's Chinese studies department and four students, in a space where original works are not usually exhibited. The curatorial intention and choice of works is the result of a dialogue within IFRAE's "Visual Sources, Textual Sources" research project. A dozen marouflaged inks come from the collection of the Lithic Archive in Brussels, which brings together contemporary Chinese artists who have already been the subject of cultural events organized by Lia Wei. Added to this are a series of Japanese artists proposed by Isabelle Charrier, and several artists residing mainly in France, by Marie Laureillard.

Day program

• 10am: exhibition opening
• 10:45am: guided tour by Manon Kbidi
• 1:30pm: guided tour by Anna Le Menach and Paula Suméra
• 3:45pm: guided tour by Mina Kouame
• 6pm: guided tour by Lia Wei
• 7pm: exhibition closes

An exhibition curated by Lia Wei (IFRAE, Senior Lecturer in Chinese Art History, Inalco).

Curatorial team: Manon Kbidi, Mina Kouame, Anna Le Menach and Paula Suméra (students in the Department of Chinese Studies, Inalco).

List of artists

ADACHI Takeo, ARASE Kaname, CONG Peibo, FUTAMURA Yoshimi, HU Jiaxing, HU Jie, JIANG Hanxuan, KIM Hyeonsuk, KIM Sanlang, Lia WEI, Lithic Impressions, LIU Tianyu, MA Desheng, MATSUTANI Takesada, MURAKAMI Santo, TANG Kaizhi, WATASE Yoko, WU Jialin, XU Demin, ESCANDE Yolaine, YU Li, YU Peng, ZHANG Qiang , ZHAO Fei, ZHU Pengfei.