JPS Gallery is delighted to present a distinctive group exhibition specially curated for French May 2024, The show invites five contemporary artists who were either born or based in France to present their unique experiences and perspectives of the world through a diverse range of mediums, scales, and concepts that reflect of their artistic prowess.  Artists Edmond Li Bellefroid, Kean, Lokz Phoenix, Ricko Leung, and Timm Blandin's artistic oeuvres are each uniquely interwoven with rich cultural influences they have acquired through their relationship with France, and this exhibition aims to offer viewers a glimpse into the diversity of contemporary French art and its impact on the world.

Edmond Li Bellefroid 

Edmond Li Bellefroid (b. 1987, France) is a fine art painter and illustrator from Paris who works with various mediums such as oil, acrylic, engravings, found objects, graphics, and illustrations. At turns playful and profound, his work is where cultures, time periods, and styles meet, transform, and evolve as his imagery depicts the many levels of reality we simultaneously inhabit.

No stranger to these intricacies, Bellefroid is rooted in them as his father is a French diplomat, and his mother is the renowned Chinese painter Li Shuang, who provided him with the foundations of his artistic education. He also studied graphic design and worked as a set designer at the Théatre of the Sun with Ariane Mnouschikine. Bellefroid has participated in several solo and group exhibitions across France and overseas. He is currently based in Paris and Beijing.

Kean

Kean (b. 1988, France) is a French graffiti artist and painter based in Mulhouse, east of France. Self-taught, Kean developed a very personal way of painting which led him to transition from graffiti to abstraction.

The frame and the window are two important 'components' in his approach. Whether rectangular in shape or representing a porthole, his works' colour gradations and nuances are endowed with strong emotional power, inciting the viewer to daydream and contemplate. His creations possess an ethereal and atmospheric, yet often equally geometric and analytic quality that offers viewers similar experiences of the Light and Space movement originating from Southern California in the early 1960s, where artists placed the study of perceptual phenomena at the centre of their concerns, more specifically, light and space.

Lokz Phoenix 

Lokz Phoenix (b. 1986, Hong Kong) is a painter and ceramicist whose artistic career began when she moved to Paris in 2016. Her artistic practice started with romanticised representations of the female body, and her most recent works centre around utopian depictions of forests with a haunting and magical quality that reflects her ever-evolving imagination and ability to present paintings with a continual cascade of form and meaning.

The female body inspired her earlier works as it is part of her identity and a visual language that best represents her. It offers an intimate view into the emotion, power, and sensitivity within them. By exaggerating the movement of her characters and striking their faces, viewers can attain a deeper understanding of relationships and emotions through their body language.

The sense of femininity instilled within her ceramics and oil paintings reveals Phoenix's intention to provide viewers with an opportunity to appreciate the beauty of the female body through different mediums.

Timm Blandin

Timm Blandin (b. 1987, France) is a French artist living and working in Haute-Savoie, in the East of France. His paintings of landscapes or scenes from everyday life are colourful, immersive, and contemplative, suspended in time between dreams and reality. By revealing the hidden charm of the mundane, he reminds us that beauty can be found in the simplest things.

Through his art, he invites us to awaken our senses and appreciate the wonders of our everyday lives.

The growing digital environment led him to develop an interest towards computer-aided creations, and it has been a key tool for him to compose, mix, and harmonise his works. His return to painting was motivated by the need to materialise a creation, returning to a time of action rather than calculation inherent in the digital universe.

Ricko Leung

Ricko Leung (b. 1987, Hong Kong) is a visual artist and independent curator living and working in Paris since 2014. Born and raised in Hong Kong, she draws inspiration from her multicultural identity and quotidian observations. Her artwork explores the complex relationship between personal experiences and wider social, political, and natural environments, raising awareness and fostering dialogue about key issues that shape our society. Using various mediums such as ceramic, textile, photography, and text, her artwork delves into topics such as fear and control, cultural identity and post-colonialism, trauma and healing, as well as our relationship with nature.

Fascinated by the enduring positions occupied by ceramics and textiles in the history of human civilisation, Leung experiments with the multiple possibilities of combining and interacting with these two materials. Through her research and experimentation, she creates mixed-media works that deepen the understanding of human experience through a unique and personal visual language.

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