Diane Chéry

Enlightenment
A presentation by Diane Chéry

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At the end of my first day in Tainan, I had a walk around the West Central District area. I had the feeling of finally having arrived in this unknown new country when I took the path that led me to Yaoweng Temple. The streets were surrounded by so many lanterns everywhere, lightning up different colors and inscriptions. I felt it would be a beautiful object to paint on.

 

I decided to create an installation where the painting could fall in place on this new material.

 

Enlightenment is the name of this installation and of the exhibition. It refers to the light that illuminates the lanterns and also to the spiritual state of awakening. Taïnan being circumscribed by such a spiritual atmosphere and so many temples, it allowed me to reconnect with the invisible flow of life.

 

An art-residency is a precious time to experience loneliness. A time to dialogue within myself through painting as a discipline to experience the joy of being connected to here and now. As a spiritual practice, painting offers the experience to light ourselves up, to travel into different places and to follow what needs to come out.

 

My lanterns are welcoming abstract paintings : a routine to let the movement run out of the body, the process is to free my mind of the idea of a result to be only connected to the gesture and direction led by my intuition. I like to work on several paintings at the same time, to navigate them in several temporalities, then I give each of them finishing touches, as a jewelry adorned by last details and small shapes.

 

Enlightenment is an exhibition where the painting goes out of the canvas all over the walls of the gallery to bring an immersive experience to the audience being surrounded by shapes and colors. The gallery is thought of as a temple of visual journey. An intimate place of reflection of my inner travel in parallel to the travel I have made in this new land. Some paintings are the same size as postcards, they are inspired by some I have written. Paintings on the wall are inspired by landscapes, images and Chinese characters I have seen or learned here. Abstraction and realism are finding balance together as an inner and external travel.

 

Lanterns have been performed outside of the exhibition place, from the gallery to the city, to manifest a journey of the exhibition and the paintings moving in the streets, as a ceremony of this new temple : Summon, dance, carnival of art.

 

Thank you both to Absolute Space AIR for this great opportunity and to Espace Temps from Paris for their support.