Lionel Esteve – “a wander” solo exhibition

Text/Photos by Chen Chi-Hsiang. Dates: April 18 to May 30. Venue: Perrotin Gallery. The end of nature is the beginning of art. Lionel Esteve, like the famous French writer Rousseau, purifies his imagination through flora and fauna. He re-engages with nature to create a new relationship with it, transforming poetic pressed-flower series and plant-and-flora-gilded series into an inner nature, forming a unique vocabulary. Indeed, nature tells us something; flowers and grasses are energy and consciousness from the earth, a profound mystery of existence. The human-nature relationship is full and complex, worthy of understanding and experience. The pressed-flower series emphasizes material, color, and form like abstract painting, while the gilded series leans toward line drawing like Matisse’s large cutouts. Installed on an entire wall, he says this surprises him, like a wild forest or a flame-like radiance.