Galerie Claude Lemand

https://drive.google.com/file/d/18n­HVV4zm-PjNmgUdYrRHnSI1iaRKHT-h/view
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Manabu KOCHI. Spring Artist.
Personal exhi­bi­tion of his recent Paintings and Sculptures.
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Visits: everyday, only by appoint­ment.
cle­mand@o­r­ange.fr . +336 7377 0589

GALERIE CLAUDE LEMAND
70 avenue Jean Moulin , 75014 PARIS .
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Manabu KOCHI. Spring Artist
By Claude Lemand

I am delighted to be able to cel­e­brate the 35th anniver­sary of the founding of my gallery in Paris and the 35th anniver­sary of my first encounter with the artist Manabu Kochi, with an exhi­bi­tion of a selec­tion of his recent paint­ings and sculp­tures, under a title that sums up his pos­i­tive vision of the world and humanity: Manabu Kochi. Spring Artist. The highly cre­ative inspired forms and vibrant, vivid colours of his work are an expres­sion of his way of living in the world, always pos­i­tive, despite the dark­ness of human his­tory - of which he is well aware.

From my first meeting in Paris in December 1988, with Manabu and Midori his wife, the artist told me: "I am more for har­mony than for con­flict, for har­mony between all living beings: the variety is source of wealth and the search for purity is illu­sory, because it leads to fanati­cism.” This reflec­tion is a man­i­festo of his uni­ver­salist and paci­fist phi­los­ophy, opposed to all dic­ta­tor­ship and all war, which can only lead to destruc­tion, death and mis­for­tune, as was the case in Japan and on the island of Okinawa where he is from.

From the first time we met, I was cap­ti­vated by his work and his endearing per­son­ality. Since then, we have not left each other’s side, forging links between our two fam­i­lies and estab­lishing an ongoing cre­ative intel­lec­tual and aes­thetic dia­logue. In my gallery, in inter­na­tional fairs, museums and through the media, I have done my best to high­light the paint­ings, the sculp­tures and the graphic works, which he was able to develop and enrich from year to year, through mul­tiple vari­a­tions of themes, of forms and on var­ious media.

In recent years, Manabu Kochi has gone through a long and dif­fi­cult period due to the cancer that struck him. He has come through it with courage and deter­mi­na­tion, like a test of a regen­er­a­tive fire. His per­son­ality emerged even stronger and more uni­versal, his art was renewed and deep­ened: he is now embracing the expres­sion, through appro­priate artistic and per­sonal means, not only of the har­mony and beauty of the World, but also new feel­ings in his work: his empathy in the face of any tragic event, his anger in the face of injus­tices, crimes, tor­ture and mas­sacres past and pre­sent, without ever for­get­ting to sing the forms and colors of hope and announce­ment of the rebirth of an Eternal Spring, which he has always felt and defined him­self as a Spring Artist.

During the two years of con­fine­ment due to Covid, Manabu Kochi suc­ceeded to create a fab­u­lous body of works - which I will have the oppor­tu­nity to exhibit and pub­lish under the generic title "Painting and Poetry" -, made up of large water­colors and artists’ books, results of his dia­logue with the texts of Marguerite Yourcenar (The Last Love of Prince Genji), Claude Aveline (Portrait of The Non-Existent-Bird, Monologue for a Disappeared, Dead Time) and the two great Japanese haiku poets (Matsuo Basho and Kobayashi Issa).

I am happy and proud to tes­tify that Manabu Kochi is a great artist, because he rose to the his­tor­ical chal­lenges that I had pro­posed to him to take on in recent years, with admirable paint­ings to express his emo­tion and his sol­i­darity in the face of the fire at Notre-Dame de Paris in April 2019, then the fire at the Shuri castle in Okinawa and in the face of the explo­sions at the port of Beirut in August 2020. They will be pub­lished in the gen­eral mono­graph that the gallery will ded­i­cate in November 2024, along with the visuals of his main works (paint­ings on canvas, paint­ings on paper, sculp­tures in unique painted pieces and sculp­tures in lim­ited edi­tion in bronze), his Autobiography, com­ments on his works and texts from var­ious con­trib­u­tors.

CLAUDE LEMAND. Doctor in com­par­a­tive lit­er­a­ture, former uni­ver­sity pro­fessor, col­lector since 1981, gallery owner and art pub­lisher in Paris since 1988, impor­tant donor with his wife France to the museum of the Institut du monde Arabe in Paris, researcher and exhi­bi­tion curator.