Excerpt from Chu Teh-Chun. In Nebulaby Matthieu Poirier

Chu’s chromatic turbulence, even when patiently observed, is difficult to imprint on the memory. Afterwards, it retains only the blurred, fleeting impression of a diversely colored flow of energy, of an unfinished Gestalt, of an uninterrupted process. For Chu guides his brush across the canvas with calligraphic precision, sometimes with the nervous tone of a conductor’s hand beating the air, sometimes with the sensual fluidity of seaweed waving in the current. These myriad fine colored brushstrokes are much more than a trace of gestural action: they weave an enveloping, voluptuous womb, a continuum of complex harmony. There is considerable tension between, on the one hand, the material fixity of the painting-object and, on the other, the mnemonic phenomenon of an impossible mental cartography. In the same way, the viewer’s associations of water, mountains, steep walls, vertiginous escapes, and other valley bottoms, or with skies bursting with sunshine or electric storms, have nothing to do with description, but come from painting practiced as the vehicle of a past reminiscence passed through the prism of the imaginary and the history of art.

Gallimard

240 pages

30 €

April 2024