The vibrating encounter between the painter's gesture and the surface of the paper. A visual language in balance between oriental culture and the experiences of European research. A fantastic personal usage of monochromatic ink pushed to the limit of its technical possibilities. All this cohabits in the painting production of Gao Xingjian, the Chinese intellectual, who has been living in France for many years, awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 2000 and well-known for his fiction production as well as for his past as a theatre director and for his production as a figurative artist, recently consecreted in an important solo-show at the Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid

For the first time ever in Italy The Galleria Torbandena and Bonawentura/Teatro Miela in Triest present the painting production of Gao Xingjian, a fundamental segment of a creative experience made interfusing his Chinese roots with impulses from the western culture.

The opening will be held on Thursday 3rd April and the exhibition will be open to the public from 4th April through 4th May 2003.

The exhibition, organised by Marilena Pasquali in collaboration with the Centro Studi Giorgio Morandi in Bologna, will present around 50 works by the Chinese artist, some of which of big dimensions, coming from the collection of the Morat-Institut in Freiburg (Germany). The Teatro Miela (changed from theatre into exhibition centre for the occasion) and the Galleria Torbandena will offer the contact with one of the most innovative artists in the contemporary creative panorama through two cultural stops, physically close to each other, in the very historical heart of Triest. Before reaching success and notoriety in the West, Gao Xingjian has profoundly influenced Chinese culture, contributing in a very relevant way to that evolution process which has opened new horizons for the artists of his country.

The works on show are from the most intense decade of Gao Xingjian's pictorial research: 1983 - 1993. They are inks on rice paper, a traditional technique raised by the artist to an extremely refined level, obtaining an infinite range of greys with the least technical means and using this expressive possibility to create works which resound either of the ways of expressing typical of the eastern figurative tradition and of the experiences of the western avant-garde currents.

In Italy, where he is already well-known for his books published by Rizzoli, the painting one is probably the less known segment of Gao Xingjian's artistic experience. His unique capacity to express himself in such different media always at the highest level constitutes the distinctive feature of the artist's whole production and combines itself with the equally unique capacity of dialoguing without hesitations with cultures so different one from the other which apparently don't seem to allow any possible dialogue.

CATALOGUE AVAILABLE

Other works in exhibition

 COMUNICATO STAMPA (gao_e.pdf, 108 Kb)