Wallasse Ting - the flower thief
Thursday 6 October 2016: Opening of the exhibition (7/10/2016 to 26/02/2017) Wallasse Ting - the flower thief at the Cernuschi museum.
The itinerary of Walasse Ting, an unclassifiable artist born in Shanghai, active in Paris, then New York and Amsterdam, foreshadows the internationalization of contemporary Chinese art that took place in the 1990s. After having left China for Hong Kong in 1946, Walasse Ting wins Paris in 1953. His creations, which emphasize the expressiveness of the pictorial gesture, are in phase with the achievements of the CoBrA group, some members of which, such as Pierre Alechinsky, express their interest in the Asian practices of the art of the brush.
At this time he also met Sam Francis, whom he will find in New York a few years later. It is in this city that Walasse Ting discovers his universe, going back and forth between ink and pure color, between the codes of Chinese painting and the spontaneity of Action Painting. It is then part of the New York creative landscape through collective achievements, such as the project 1 Cent Life (1964), which brings together with Pierre Alechinsky and Sam Francis, Jean-Paul Riopelle, Asger Jorn, Robert Indiana, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol ...
In 1970, Walasse Ting donated 80 paintings to the Cernuschi Museum, representing in an almost exhaustive manner his abundant and playful universe. From monumental compositions featuring women with vegetal bodies to the leaves of a confession book, this set is inseparable from the subversive figure of the “flower thief”, the artist's double imaginary.
This collection, which has never been exhibited, has been the subject of a very important restoration campaign in recent years. Following the recent retrospective on the artist by the Museum of Modern Art of Taipei in 2011, largely composed of works from the 1980 and 1990 years, the Cernuschi museum returns to the entire Walasse Ting course by awarding a privileged place for the exchanges he has woven in the European and American artistic circles.
Untitled (Woman with parrot), Walasse Ting. 1980 years Ink and colors on paper. 95,5 x 176 cm Archive Pierre Alechinsky. © The Estate of Walasse Ting / ADAGP, 2016 / Photo Michel Nguyen.
Jonrs'Grave. Pierre Alechinsky, Asger Jorn and Walasse Ting. 1970-1993. Acrylic on canvas mounted on canvas 64 x 94 cm. Silkeborg, Asger Jorn Museum. © Jorn Museum, Silkeborg
