Ma Kelu

An artist on the fringes of the official art world 

Ma Kelu, born in Shanghai in 1954, belongs to a generation of artists who, from the 1970s onwards, operated on the fringes of the official art world. A founding member of the No Name group, he moved to New York in the late 1980s, where his understanding of action painting and colour field painting led him towards a gestural, atmospheric and unadorned form of abstraction.

A poetic painting that echoes medieval paintings

Presented on the same level as the medieval frescoes and their architectural setting, Ma Kelu’s paintings resonate, in both form and content, with the religious figures floating against plain skies.

In Ma Kelu’s work, the motifs are like clouds shaped by the wind and figures defying gravity. The forms in his paintings convey, above all, the passage of time, as in the work of Judith Reigl or Hans Hartung.

Whilst it immediately brings to mind the floating world of Monet’s later period and the frontal composition of Matisse, Ma Kelu’s abstract style defies analysis. His world, by turns sombre and luminous, is always unstable and teeming with life. Filled with symbols, it becomes, as we observe it, an immersive and hypnotic sky where our gaze weaves its way through the strands of paint. Its mystery remains.

An experience of movement

In the style of the medieval frescoes in the Cité’s mural gallery, Ma Kelu invites us to experience a visual chaos. Within each work, but also from one painting to the next, repetition defines a playing field where each form finds its uniqueness in movement. The choice of monochrome or, more rarely, two-colour schemes emphasises the repeated and modulated gesture, which acts as the agent of a metamorphosis.

Ma Kelu’s works are now held in numerous institutions and museums, such as the Tate Modern, the Guangdong Art Museum, the M+ Art Museum and the National Museum of China.

With the support of the François Cheng Endowment Fund