To celebrate the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between France and China, the Feng Shang gallery is offering a solo exhibition by Cécile Girard in 2024.

Presentation of the artist: Cécile Girard is a French artist born in Paris. Currently she resides between France and China. Based in Shanghai since 2009 to teach fine arts, she works on her ink technique with contemporary and traditional Chinese painters, which enriches her works. She discovered traditional painting in the 90s where she studied calligraphy at the Beijing School of Fine Arts after studying painting and art history in Paris, at the Martenot school then at the the Louvre school and the Sorbonne. Cécile Girard's painting style emphasizes the special treatment of materials - particularly custom-made rice paper in An Hui, China. His special Xuan paper processing technique combines Chinese ink, acrylic and oil in vivid, deep colors producing a rich and dimensional artistic effect. In Cécile's works, we can perceive her perspectives on the fusion of Eastern and Western cultures through the experimentation of interweaving: calligraphic style, pictogram, Chinese landscape painting, Zhongcai, and stained glass. Painter and teacher in Shanghai, her art workshop for Chinese and foreign students of all ages allows her to exhibit regularly in China and France. His works have been collected by the Beijing Art Museum and the Duolun Museum of Modern Art. She collaborated with the China Pavilion in Shanghai between 2012 and 2015 ("experimental open class", exhibitions) as well as at the University of Shanghai (Shanghai Normal University, conference, publications). Some of the most notable exhibitions include solo exhibitions – his exhibitions with galleries at M50, Shanghai Duolun Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai 2017, a joint exhibition, Ross Lewis and Cécile Girard in Conversation and a group exhibition at ArtCN Gallery in Shanghai in 2016 as well as a joint exhibition with Chinese artists with the China Central Academy of Fine Arts and Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts Xi'an in 2012.

In 2005, she was selected for the France-Cross Years China 2003-2005 and had a solo exhibition of his works at the Beijing Art Museum. In 2014, Cécile participated in an exhibition at the Shanghai Mint Co museum (Shanghai Mint Museum). She also participated in a collective exhibition (in France and China) bringing together Chinese and French artists as part of the 50 years of France-China relations. Since 2019, Cécile has collaborated with Galerie Xixi, Art Museum in China A permanent exhibition of Cécile's works is presented there. Since 2022, Cécile has collaborated with Galerie Feng Shang in France where she is artist in residence. Two exhibitions were organized as part of this collaboration in 2022 and 2023.

Artistic approaches: “Hidden landscapes” Cécile's art practices on paper Towards the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, nationalist consciousness began to take shape. awakening in China in the field of art under the influence of modern Western industrial civilization. During this time, many artists went to study either in Europe or in Japan, the neighboring country which had already introduced European art, with the designs of launching a reform in Chinese painting by absorbing the concepts as well as the forms of Western art, of which Xu Beihong and Lin Fengmian are preeminent representatives. On the other hand, the orthodox literati painting represented by Huang Binhong propelled the modern transformation of Chinese painting into conventional linguistic structure Their artistic practices in external expressive form and internal spiritual level, have offered us two effective means of merging Chinese art with that in the West. As the historical process of reform and opening-up has progressed since the 1970s, an increasing number of Western artists have come to China with their curiosity about Eastern culture. They started in traditional Chinese painting by enriching it with Western concepts and techniques, they have, one would say, succeeded in transforming Chinese painting to another level.

The French artist Cécile Girard settled in China in the 1990s, beginning her journey of artistic exploration there for more than 20 years. Cécile has adopted the typically Chinese taste for nature. In her creation, she focused on the study of brush, ink and materials of Chinese painting and she tried to adorn it with Western analytical color, creating a unique artistic perspective. In her first series called Paysages I, Cécile tried to apply different strokes and colors in the representation of the natural landscape, she sketched objects with the pretty calligraphic strokes of the brush to create the effect of “pictorial calligraphy” . We notice, even, the traits of the style of “epigraphic calligraphy-painting (金石书画)” and the strokes of painting are visible in some of his works. The maturity in his works demonstrates a strong inner expressiveness and strength filled with acrylic paint and the thick colors of oil paint In his last series of Landscape Ⅲ, his use of brush and ink reached extreme limits. Brush and ink calligraphy is presented on paper in a more free manner, and the color of his paintings tends to be more simple and elegant. Brush, ink and colors reflecting, this forms an image of Eastern Zen.

Cécile's mode of creation in this phase is close to the paintings of Chinese scholars who express the inner spirit of painters with the description of nature. Although the language has constantly changed since then, the basic structure of his paintings has remained the same. Chinese rice paper becomes an essential material in Cécile’s creation. As a Westerner, she has a rich imagination for the selection and use of materials. Through special treatments such as kneading, crimping and thickening of rice paper, a special texture and three-dimensional visual effect are transformed into part of the paper itself. This type of paper has a unique feature, that is, the folding of the paper would show the similar effect of the wrinkled aesthetic in Chinese landscape painting when ink is spread on it. In his recent works, the implementation of this creative method, that is to say it rather softened the brush strokes as much as it strengthened the formal representation to the functionality of the material, this became increasingly more mature in his practices. In the background we see simple lines vaguely drawn by the artist, which form a horizontal and vertical visual representation of the dual landscape as well as the shading image formed by color on rice paper.

This breaks the limit of time and space in the picture, it is similar to the concepts of “three-modal distance (三远)” in the landscape painting of the Song Dynasty. The deep, mysterious chromatic expression and artistic conception of the picture's composition demonstrate the artist's concern for the aesthetic subject, behind which lies the artist's broader view of the world and his philosophy of life. Cécile realized the deep meaning of this painting by Chinese scholars in her continued practice and she integrated it perfectly into her own abstract language. The artistic value of Chinese landscape painting far exceeds painting techniques. What is most important is the oriental literary spirituality hidden behind the painting techniques.

Cécile's painting practices provided us with a sample that would allow us to discover the vast space and possibility of the modern transformation of Chinese painting, which went beyond the artistic experience of Chinese painting itself.

Gu Jiajun Deputy Director of the Duolun Museum of Modern Art in Shanghai

Words from the gallery: Cécile Girard is an international artist, she has a rich knowledge of art in theory and practice. She has a dual culture, this allowed her to create works with two different minds of the abstract. His works are collected publicly and privately.