Michel Madore was a Canadian painter, sculptor and poet. Recently, he has collected his paintings from his 2015-2020 stay in China into an exhibition called "Travel Map".
The figure has always been the center of Michelle Maddow's painting. "Since the first painting 25 years ago, I've seen figures walking back and forth from the left and right sides of the canvas, always sideways, and I feel as if I were walking next to them and feeling them, and they were like family. After this painting I told myself that part of me had followed this crowd. Where are they going? Where to go? With whom? The only thing that is certain is that they have a community of destiny, as all of our human brothers and sisters cherished by the poet Fran ois Villon. Michelle Maddow was in the preparation of the original idea for this exhibition.
Dream Booker - 1 30 x 30 cm, 2016 charcoal on paper, collage
In Maddow's paintings, the viewer can see ethereal elegance, extreme restraint on lines and a large amount of white space. The overlapping and staggering of skin-like paper on the linen cloth forms an accident, forming various grayscales and spaces. The landscapes, figures and heavenly domes under the Western narrative constitute another scene of heaven and man, michelle Maddeau's art originates from the West, and his artistic path meets the East unexpectedly. Michel Maddeau has a keen interest in Eastern philosophy, and in his work we see a fusion of East and West.
Dream Booker - 2 30 x 30 cm, 2016 charcoal on paper, collage
In a 2011 dialogue, the art critic and curator Bao Dong mentioned Michel Mado's art this way: "We see that in Maddow's works there is often a 'body', not just an image of the body, that is to say, he does not use painting to depict the real body, he presents an abstract sense of body in painting, which involves a certain metaphysical body, and it can even be said that every existence in this world has its own' The body', such as the charcoal on the canvas, creates a subtle frictional relationship with the linen, and in the friction we can see the painter controlling his fingers, the fingers connected to the arms and the eyes, and the lines of this charcoal pen are traces of the operation of the 'flesh of the world' (a concept of Merleo Ponty). ”
Where Are We (Partial)
80 x 240 cm,2015-2016
Framed paintings
As a painter, Michel Maddow believed in hands, in materials, in time, and it was not so much that he allowed these things to express himself, but that he had already surrendered his life as a painter to them. Only in this way can the painter's ego show a silent light. Because he found other life in his work—the charcoal strips moving forward on the picture, the lines of the linen canvas hiding memories of plants, and the paper breaking and closing. Only these experiences of life silence thought and replace them with faith in hands and materials. Through these ancient beliefs, painting becomes an exploration of the visibility of the invisible world, an act that appeals to the depth of life rather than its exterior; and the freedom of the painter depends on the extent to which he is able to allow himself to walk into this obscure place and rely on the little tremor from the finger to the depths of life—not just the eyes and the mind, to reach his own reality. Young scholar, art critic and curator He Jing wrote in the foreword to the exhibition.
At the Zhihe Space, visitors can also buy Chinese translations of Michel Maddow's latest collection of essays, Ratures et repentirs. The exhibition will run until February 14, 2022. in Bubu