Critic by Gérard Xuriguera
SHE HAS CREATED A WORLD OF HER OWN
Franco-Chinese or Sino-French, Li Chevalier uses Chinese ink in an unprecedented way, creating dark, torn landscapes, set against backgrounds crossed by chalky flushes and minute sparkles that spawn nocturnal vibrations and recurrent spatterings, originating in what Toshimitsu Imai calls « controled accident ». The field of vision flares out, flickers and then narrows down toward mineral, or sometimes sidereal, zones, beneath the never premeditated assaults of the ink, often intertwined with acrylic, sand or collages, which the thinking hand of the artist orchestrates in a gestural round dance blushed with contained effervescence. At times, a vague silhouette emerges from an uncertain mist, or a solitary Christian cross bent over by the breeze, as in Breton pilgrimages. At other times, an aquatic impression, or one of volcanic magma, emanates from beneath the material, while at the same time, a sort of deaf and moving abstraction shows through, striped with delicate creases and phosphorescent glimmers that evoke almost menacing climates, but wherein reigns, primarily, an atmosphere or a presence. There is a kind of melancholia, a fallacious distance, but above all, true mastery. These grave and secret images are essentially evocatory, they refer to nature, but a quintessentialized nature, which belongs solely to its author. Li Chevalier has not given in to the temptation of drawing a bridge between East and West : she has created a world, a world of her own.
