Charles Coturel – Yu Jen-chih
Charles Coturel, “Les invasives”, 2024. Lithographie et crayon de couleur, 45 x 60 cm
Yu Jen-chih, “Réminiscence II”, 2024. Technique mixte sur papier, 110 x 75 cm
Charles Coturel graduated from the Angers School of Fine Arts. In 2014, he was a finalist in the FID Prize (international drawing competition) and in 2015, he received the Visual Arts Prize from the City of Nantes. He was the subject of a major solo exhibition in 2022 at the La Ferme des Tilleuls Cultural Center in Lausanne (CH).
Yu Jen-chih studied Fine Arts at Tunghai University (Taiwan) and cinema at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University. He is the author of literary files in direct collaboration with Milan Kundera, Carlos Fuentes, Fernando Arrabal and Massimo Rizzante, and of written portraits of artists (Mikhaïl Kobakhidzé, Amos Gitai, Patricia Erbelding, Tony Soulié…). He is represented in Hong Kong by the Alsane Fine Art Gallery.
“Through Eden they walk alone […]”. This quote from John Milton’s epic poem “Paradise Lost” inspired the title of this exhibition which brings together artists Charles Coturel (France) and Yu Jen-chih (Taiwan).
Charles Coturel draws flowers and plants of exuberant beauty, sometimes unloved like these invasive plants from elsewhere, objects of eradication campaigns. At the same time, it lists strange colored plants imagined by man for the cinema industry or theme park tourism, artificial plants which make up a new Eden. The liveliness of the colors or the pictorialist aspect of the grain of the drawings add to the ambivalence of a statement which questions our relationship to nature and the landscape. This same feeling is revealed in his charcoal drawings of bonsai, or more recently his paintings on canvas in acrylic, watercolor and dry pastel, of plants raised in greenhouses because they are unsuitable in our latitudes.
Painter and engraver, Yu Jen-chih is a Taiwanese artist, also an art critic for magazines and newspapers in France, Taiwan, Hong Kong and China. A great music lover, his titanic work (as described by the poet Fernando Arrabal) takes its source from literature, poetry, cinema, music… He thus explores the poetic and aesthetic language of the flower and its landscape, in particular the Hydrangea that he draws, paints and engraves. In his last large oil paintings, he transcends their beauty into large expressive waves from which emerge both an impression of power and sensuality. The large diptych painting, created especially for the exhibition, is a tribute to Cy Twombly.
