At 4:00 p.m. on June 11, the first solo exhibition "Narrative" held by the well-known French artist Vincent Lacquer in Chengdu was grandly opened at the Xu Liaoyuan Museum of Modern Design and Design.
Born in 1977, the artist, whose original name is Vincent Cazeneuve, has used the word "lacquer" as his Chinese surname since coming to China more than a decade ago and becoming acquainted with lacquerware art, expressing his love for this ancient craft that is closely related to nature.
Before today's launch, Red Star News reporters came to the exhibition site on the second floor of the Xu Liaoyuan Museum of Modern Design and Art, where Vincent Qi Zheng and the staff debugged the short documentary film "Paint Man" that will be played on the scene. In this 3-minute video, you can see him following the lacquer farmers into the mountains and forests, and you can see people cutting V-shaped openings in the lacquer trees and carefully collecting raw lacquer.
Exhibition site
"Watching the paint slowly flow out of the bark, I don't know why I was so shaken." This sentence was written by him on the description of a work on the exhibition site, next to which on the ground was a moss-covered sumac trunk and a set of lacquer picking tools. Vinson told reporters that the sickle was used to remove thorns from the side of the sumac tree to facilitate walking when cutting the paint; the branches cut into short wooden wedges were used to insert them into the trunks of trees as "ladders" for climbing trees.
"The lacquer picker has a saying called 'a hundred miles and a thousand knives and a pound of paint', which means that you have to walk a hundred miles, cut a thousand holes in the tree, and finally produce a pound of paint." Vincent said, "And a sumac tree can only cut about 10 kilograms of raw lacquer during its life cycle." ”
Vincent Paint explains the creation process of the work at the exhibition site
Vinson told reporters that after graduating from the Rivel Institute of Arts and Crafts in France, he first set up a personal studio dedicated to the restoration of antique furniture, mainly repairing Asian and Western lacquerware. "When I was very young, I saw the lacquer works of the famous French decorative artist Gaston Suisse in Paris, and I liked them very much, and gradually embarked on the road of studying and artistic creation of lacquer art."
France did not produce lacquer, and he later learned that one of the best sources of lacquer was in China. Lacquer is Chinese lacquer, and the origin is distributed in Sichuan, Chongqing, Yunnan, Guizhou and other places.
In 2007, at the age of 30, Vincent first came to China to learn from lacquerware masters in Sichuan and Chongqing. Later, he chose to settle in Chongqing, established a studio in the mountains near the city, and engaged in artistic creation using lacquer as a raw material for more than a decade. He married a Chinese wife who studied oil painting and sewing, and last year the two had a cute child, named "Little Seven Lacquer".
The golden part of this work is a bamboo dustpan hand-woven by Vincent
Vincent blended the French Art Deco style with traditional Chinese utensils, and gradually explored his own unique artistic language and presentation methods - eggshell fragments inlaid, gold leaf covering, sacks of rice, bamboo dustpans he hand-woven, native cloth woven by himself spinning threads... The artist's hands-on ability is first-class.
The dark fabric underneath this piece is a fabric woven by Vincent's own spinning thread
In this exhibition in Chengdu, Vincent deliberately presented many new works with Yi elements - for this reason, he went deep into Daliangshan, visited the local Yi lacquerware non-hereditary inheritors, and deeply understood the local traditional lacquerware craftsmanship, especially the production process of Yi lacquer armor and patent leather bowls, and integrated them into his new works.
In the work "Untitled", the dark part of the material comes from the wool felt cloak of the Yi people
All of these works, which contain abstract beauty and simple and interesting shapes, are all named "untitled", and Vincent said that each viewer is free to interpret what they see and feel.
It is reported that the exhibition will last until July 30 and is free to the public.
Red Star News reporter | Qiao Xueyang photo report
Edited | Duan Xueying
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