Unable to travel? Collect Artworks from abroad

Travels, whether for work or for leisure, offer us windows on other people, other places, other civilizations. We have been taking them for granted and it's a very strange feeling to be unable to go out of our own country. Having more time on our hands, let's explore the world through the eyes of Artists who will open ours.

China is not only the country where the virus started. It is also the birthplace of one of the oldest civilizations that it still very much alive. Gao Hui's works are part of this tradition.

"Henan Province is renowned for its beautiful landscapes and has inspired thousands and thousands of amateur and professional photographers.

For years, I looked at a lot of photographs and ended up being jaded about them. As the saying goes: "If you are in a greenhouse full of orchids, you no longer smell their scent." The beauty of the landscapes ends up being trivialized by the standardization of shots and images.

When I discovered Gao Hui's work by chance, I was struck by its originality. If one looks at the images superficially, they may seem close to traditional aesthetic effects. Nor is its digital processing new or unique. Yet a closer look, following the principles of semiotics defined by Roland Barthes, shows that the exploration of mountains and rivers proposed by Gao Hui is in the context of contemporary art. Priority should be given to beauty and not to the reproduction of reality. 

What emerges from Gao Hui's landscapes undoubtedly comes from his imagination. As Roger Fry said of the Impressionists: "People's lives may be real or imagined, but works of art have only an close relationship with reality." 

While some works roughly correspond to the traditional Chinese aesthetic of "empty nature", incorporating added elements forces the viewer to look at other things, to question man's place in nature, and open the door to questioning the pictorial illusion. ?

Mi Le-feng, 2013