li Chevalier solo exhibition< Visual Symphony>

VISUAL SYMPHONY

lI CHEVALIER ART EXHIBITION

Duration : July 3rd to 13/ 2013
Venue: CHINA NATIONAL OPERA
[The National Center for the Performing Arts]

As a prelude to a concert by the China National Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Paris Opera chef Philippe Jordan, artist li Chevalier takes over the State Opera of China with a large scale installation composed of over 200 string instruments all dressed up with her trade mark ink painting, photography and calligraphy. Silk screen printed manuscripts of Mozart on rice paper are mounted on light boxes that light up her installation entitled [cantabile per archi ], work inspired by a piece from Latvian composer Peteris Vasks. Various cultural artifacts are combined gathered in a visual symphony expressing Li’s motto "respecting peculiarity combined into harmony”.

li chevalier

Li Chevalier is a Chinese born artist who became French citizen in 1986. Working at the crossroads of Europe and Asia for the past two decades, Chevalier is most known for her "Euro-Asian" art language born out of blending western media and elements of eastern folk art. Her exhibitions are mostly distinguished by her own particular spatial composition and scenographic design.

Three major retrospective exhibitions of Li Chevalier have been successively presented by the National Art Museum of China, Today Art Museum in Beijing, Shanghai Art Museum since 2007. Her work became part of the permanent collection of the National Art Museum as well as National Opera of China. Two of her major works became part of the French Embassy's art collection and are hanging presently at the reception salon of the French Residence in Beijing, next to the works of two other French Chinese born artists Zao Wuki, and Zhu Dequn. li Chevalier's works have been displayed in some major international art fairs and exhibitions, such as Royal Academy of Arts London Summer exhibition[2007], Art Salon of the French National Fine Art Society at Carrousel du Louvre (2003), [ l'Art en Capital] at the Grand Palais (2007,2011), London Art Fair (2007),


Between Music and Visual Art

Alongside her professional practice as a visual artist, li chevalier having been a soprano in the Paris Orchestra’s Choir .She has been collaborating with Paris Opera musicians since 1991, staging many musical art events. Music has been one of the main recurrent themes in her visual art works. The painting entitled < I hear the water dreaming> exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2007, was a tribute to the Japanese composer Takemitzu. Her painting , now part of the French Embassy in China art collection, pays homage to Beethoven. Other examples of her works related to music abound, such as < The rite of spring >by Stravinsky, [private collection in the US ], Transfigured Night,  (Verklärte Nacht) by Arnold Schoenberg , or by Bach. In 2011, her major installation work displayed at Shanghai Art Museum was strongly inspired by Belgium composer Dirk Bosse's violin concerto: .