Kunming welcomes back French artist

More than two decades ago, in 1999 to be precise, French abstract artist Claude Viallat held his solo show at Kunming Museum in Kunming, Yunnan province, at a time when most Chinese artists rarely had opportunities to travel overseas and experience contemporary Western art. During this show, Viallat drew a Chinese dragon with a pencil on a poster.

Twenty-five years later, Viallat's work returns to Kunming at the Contemporary Gallery Kunming, directed by Nie Rongqing, who was also the designer of Viallat's 1999 show and the show's posters. Nie is also the owner of the dragon drawing which he collected at that time.

"I never imagined that my gallery will hold Viallat's show. Everything seems predestined," says Nie.

Viallat's solo show at the Contemporary Gallery Kunming displays more than 80 pieces of the famed French artist's works spanning 40 years of his career. It's one of the key cultural activities of the China-France Year of Culture and Tourism to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic ties between the two countries.

Compared with Beijing and Shanghai, Kunming in Yunnan is a city distant from China's thriving contemporary art scene. Viallat's show in 1999 in Kunming made an impact on China's art circle and attracted many curious artists and art lovers.

An established abstract artist in France, Viallat spearheaded an avant-garde art movement called Supports/Surfaces in France in the 1960s. It features painting on fabrics used in daily life without a frame, such as sun umbrellas, clothes and quilts. His works are often installed in public spaces like squares, beaches, riverbeds, forests and meadows.

"At that time, we knew nothing about Viallat's art and his works seemed very different from traditional paintings on canvas. It was the first time for us to see contemporary art works created by a Western artist," recalls Nie.

Cheng Xindong, a gallerist and a curator, who brought Viallat to Kunming in 1999, says that Chinese artists were eager to learn about Western art. He expected the show he curated to offer an opportunity to artists from China to communicate with Viallat.

The artist visited China three times in 1999. In addition to Kunming, he traveled to Chengdu in Sichuan province and Shenyang in Liaoning province as his show toured these cities.

"It did make an impact on Yunnan and maybe on some Chinese artists. It was rare to hold such kind of contemporary shows of influential artists from overseas in China," says Cheng.

When Li Mengmeng visited 88-year-old Viallat in Nimes, a city in southern France, earlier this year, showing the artist the poster with a dragon drawn by him in 1999, Viallat was surprised and immediately remembered his trip to Kunming.

Viallat shared his interesting experience of eating fried insects and watching bullfights in Kunming with Li, who worked for HdM gallery that helped bring the artist's works to Kunming this year.

Viallat was pleased that, after 25 years, his show would return to Kunming on a larger scale. He planned to visit the city in person for the opening ceremony. However, due to health reasons, he was unable to do so.

The exhibition at the Contemporary Gallery Kunming gives a comprehensive presentation of the artist's life and oeuvre, and explores the threads of his practice to introduce Viallat's art, and his contributions to art history, to a wider audience. It comprises five sections, including The Work Made Visible, Persistence, The Texture of Reality, and Opening the Gaze.

One of the core tenets of Viallat's works is to make the labor behind the artworks visible. He says it's important that a visitor should be able to realize the hard work from the presentation of the piece. In each of his art piece, viewers can easily understand how the work was made; how the fabrics were stitched together or split open, and how they were painted, printed, or dyed.

Viallat incorporates a sponge-shaped pattern into all his works, which has become a signature mark of his art. He was inspired by a practice among craftsmen in the Mediterranean who use a sponge dipped in paint to quickly apply a pattern of blue paint to walls.

Two years ago, Nie, the director of the gallery in Kunming, happened to collect one of Viallat's works. At that time, he never imagined the artist's solo show would be held at his gallery.

The exhibition has set up a space to display dozens of Viallat's fabrics just the way the artist would have liked. Viewing from a distance, visitors get a sense of a familiar outdoor scene.

"He is a very down-to-earth artist; his works are not lofty or distant but derived from everyday life. He even insists on preserving the loose threads on the fabric in his pieces and emphasizes that his works must be hung, like drying bed sheets outdoors," says Nie.

To let visitors better understand artists and art in France, the show establishes a space to illustrate important periods in France's art history and gives a special introduction to the art movement in the 1990s in France.

At the conclusion, the exhibition presents some videos showing artists who attended Viallat's 1999 show in Kunming narrating the French artist's influence on them. Chinese artist Liu Jianhua said in a video that such an important French artist holding a show in a distant Chinese city in 1999 did have a profound impact both on the city and Chinese contemporary art.

Viallat's show will run till the end of September. This is not the first exhibition at Contemporary Gallery Kunming to introduce the works of foreign artists to audiences in Southwestern China. Established in 2019, the gallery, dedicated to contemporary art, has previously hosted exhibitions featuring artists from Europe and America.

Considering Yunnan's geographical characteristics and rich biodiversity, Nie says future gallery exhibitions will focus more on themes of environmental protection and biodiversity but at the same time also continue to contribute to cultural exchanges between Chinese and foreign artists.