Hongyan

"The mind has its landscapes, the contemplation of which is left to it only a time"

Drawing from a dream-like, meditative formalism, Hongyan’s motifs are supported by celestial colors and gestures applied with gentle brushstrokes. The paintings emerge very quickly as if through a practice of mental exercise or gymnastics, gently refracting the essence of an idea or a spiritual intuition. Whilst some canvases are divided, opening onto invisible landscapes, material elements are always presented as complete, and support a vision soothed by or perhaps deferential towards a dreamed world.

Time is ever present across the works, and emerges through two tonalities: next to paintings that seem to have been made in a meditative state, organized around the rhythm of hours and the peaceful order of years, we find canvases transcribing a more chaotic and immediate vision of passing time, intense and uncontrolled.

These two facets, however, use the same elements, here lies the strength of Hongyan: to eclipse the emotions and agitations inherent in the fruit of her psychic explorations, through natural colors and simple language to create paintings released from gravity. This remarkable work thus succeeds by aligning us with the meaning of things and forms as she perceived them, while leaving us at the edge of the revelations uncovered.

- Pierre Trochu