From February 5 to June 13, 2011, at the Departmental Museum of Asian Arts, 405 Promenade des Anglais in Nice
It is on the upper floor, on the curved walls flooded with the zenithal light from the glass pyramid, that Ma Desheng’s monumental work is displayed. What better location to highlight Ma Desheng’s abstract figures? The viewer, who with a single glance embraces the giant polyptychs, is then surrounded, seized by the force and energy they exude.
These stone beings, whose hearts seem to beat, rise towards the celestial, beyond the horizon line drawn on the canvas.
Ma Desheng, a leading figure in the renewal of Chinese art, is much more than a painter. He is simultaneously a poet, engraver, calligrapher, painter, and performer. A complete and moving artist with an endearing personality, whose many facets transcend existence through art.
These stone beings express an inner fire, a creative determination that animates this breath of life without ever leaving it. These works, created especially for the Museum of Asian Arts, and thus presented to the public for the first time, invite an unprecedented, ardent, and spiritual encounter, imbued with a fierce will to live. The very same that transforms great artists into stars.
Designed by Japanese architect Kenzo Tange in 1988, the Museum of Asian Arts invites meditation. Based on simple geometric shapes, it is laden with powerful symbolic values: the square for the earth, the circle for the sky. The building of marble and glass, set on a lake, unfolds from the grand central spiral staircase, promoting the ascent of body and spirit towards the sky. Thus, the top of the building, dedicated to Buddhism, opens up to spirituality and the divine.
