Rémy Aron - From Paris to China, the Artistry of Jiannan Huang

Author: Rémy Aron

Rémy Aron and Jiannan Huang

July 20th, 2021. Painting in China remains an essential medium of thought and reflection on the world. With the exemplary training of the great art schools that cultivate learning, both in the traditions of Chinese painting and Western painting, the tools of pictorial practices are widely shared.

But, Jiannan Huang chose another path. Since his youth, he wished to discover, exclusively by himself, the secrets of nature and the secrets of the masters. It was through hard work, as he says himself, that he entered this world of painting. He thinks that alone in this maieutics, but with great perseverance in daily effort, he will be able to understand and give birth to his originality.

Indeed, the confrontation with nature has always been, throughout its course, a vital necessity. We met in Paris and in China, and the relationship was immediately established in understanding and trust.

Jiannan Huang and Rémy Aron

Jiannan Huang uses bold colors and gives them surprising shapes with extreme freedom to let his dreams unfold. It opens the doors to allow the brutal violence of colors to enter, with margins of sensitivity caught in the raw territories of humanity, between reality and its expression. They punctuate the mountains, bouquets, and landscapes that sometimes appear in his evocations.

"Dream Plateau" by Jiannan Huang (2019)

After all these years of work, Jiannan Huang perfectly combines the resources of Chinese painting, ink on paper, as well as Western painting with oil on canvas. He knows that with these resources, which he has acquired with a hard struggle, he does not want to reproduce existing images or to take up proposals that have already been digested. Rather, he wants to push his tools to the extreme limit of stridence with strong oppositions, and at the same time understood by Chinese gestures.

"Dreamland" by Jiannan Huang (2010)

Reds, blues, yellows, greens, which arrive by breaking the frame of the limits of painting, provoke a cry from the archaic depth of oneself. Jiannan Huang looks at the world, turning his head to the sky he questions. There he perceives the course of the stars in the game with immensity and, within his imagination, he finds images that want to express the bitter movements of molten matter and of unknown light, in celestial spaces.

"The Way of Heaven" by Jiannan Huang (2018)

The revelations that Jiannan Huang expresses are intense and strong. They transgress the frame of the painting to take us into his apocalyptic visions. He offers us a language of his own to take us directly through his travels, outside our galaxy towards the birth of the world of interstellar dimensions. He wants to tell us that here too is nature even if the explosion of the stars exceeds common comfort and usual taste, in barbaric incandescences.

"Dream Time" by Jiannan Huang (2016)

Jiannan Huang, who is a man of delicacy and reserve in his human relationship, leads well a work which corresponds to him, which corresponds to his intimate conviction. It simply reveals the authenticity of the approach of a painter of our time.