On the occasion of its upcoming auction, the Asian Art department at Artcurial is inaugurating a new curatorial cycle entitled “Dialogues — Echoes of the Classical and Contemporary Perspectives”, conceived as a space of transition and resonance between heritage and creation. 

This first edition highlights the Chinese artist Liu Wenqi, whose porcelain works engage in dialogue with a group of Qingbai porcelains from the Song dynasty presented in the auction. 

Conceived as a bridge between past and present, the programme “Dialogues — Echoes of the Classical and Contemporary Perspectives”, initiated by the Asian Art department at Artcurial, seeks to reveal the aesthetic and conceptual resonances that unite ancient works and contemporary creations. Through this transhistorical dialogue, it outlines a space for reflection in which the continuities of material, form, and sensibility unfold, revealing, through their interweaving, the encounter of temporalities and ideas. 

For this inaugural presentation, Liu Wenqi unveils a group of twelve porcelain works, notably from the two series Le soleil de la brume and La valse du temps. These works, imbued with silent meditation, explore variations of the sun, light, perception, and time, through an approach in which material becomes the vehicle for a sensory experience.

Born in Shanghai in 1985, Liu Wenqi now lives and works in Paris. Trained at the Shanghai Academy of Film Arts and later at Studio Berçot, where she graduated in fashion design in 2011, she collaborated with several major international fashion houses — including Maison Margiela, Balenciaga, and Louis Vuitton — developing a singular perspective on textiles and materiality. Since 2018, she has devoted herself fully to her independent artistic practice and has been represented since 2019 by Galerie Capazza.

Liu Wenqi’s work revolves around the notion of “relationship,” exploring the subtle links between the individual and the world, between intimate memory and sensory perception. Her visual language, at the crossroads of textiles, architecture, and the microscopic, gives rise to works in which porcelain becomes a vibrating surface, a place of resonance and contemplation. 

This approach finds a particular echo in the works presented in the sale, notably the Qingbai porcelains of the Song dynasty. Through the restraint of forms, the subtlety of glazes, and the attention paid to light, ancient and contemporary creations seem to converse across centuries, affirming the enduring permanence of a shared sensibility to material and time.

The works of Liu Wenqi have entered the permanent collections of the Musée Joseph-Déchelette in Roanne, as well as the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, reflecting the growing institutional recognition her work has received on the international scene. 

Presented as part of this exhibition, these works are not intended for sale.