French artist turns Beijing stay into dreamy canvas

Wearing cloth shoes that are typical to China, French artist Julien des Monstiers has explored Beijing during his recent three-month stay by immersing himself in the local life rather than going around the city just as a tourist. Now, he is reflecting his experience on canvas and sharing it with people at his solo exhibition entitled Someone Else’s Dream.

The show displays his works created in Beijing, including both abstract paintings and figurative ones, the art forms that he uses in Paris, where he lives.

Among his works on display are a painting of sculpture-like blue waves and a series of abstract paintings that have hidden animals, such as an elephant and a butterfly, as well as mythical creatures like dragons, all symbolizing dreams.

The 34-year-old artist says the process of painting is like dreaming — without reasonable plots. When dreamers wake up, their dreams may feel unreal but they do remember some parts.

“My exploration of Beijing is also like a dream with many fragments, I can clearly tell,” he says.

He arrived in Beijing in June and lived in a traditional courtyard in an alley not far away from the Forbidden City. It was his first visit to China, and he knew very little about the country then.

Every day, he rode a threewheeled vehicle to commute between his rented courtyard house and a studio where he produced his paintings.

He paid his daily bills through phone and bought lots of things on Taobao, China’s largest e-commerce platform. He also registered on WeChat, a popular instant messaging app.

He made full use of his time living in a city that is different from Paris and produced more than 10 largescale oil paintings.

His last two works produced in Beijing are inspired by images of the god of wealth made by traditional Chinese woodblock printing. Monstiers was intrigued by such pictures and he painted it on a largesize canvas. He even painted the exact Chinese characters on it.

“Writing Chinese characters is like another kind of painting for me,” he says.

The French artist doesn’t only paint on canvas. He applies the technique of making woodblock prints using a thin layer of plastic to transform the paints he draws on wood to his large-scale canvas part by part.

Monstiers says he loves the process of transforming, which generates the power of resistance, a frequent topic he uses in his works.

He is a winner of the Yishu 8 prize, which supports artists from France and China to do art residence projects in the two countries.

Christine Cayol, founder of Yishu 8, an art institute that helms the program, says Monstiers’ paintings show a dialogue between the artist and such masters as Claude Monet and Pablo Picasso, as well as a dialogue between the artist and Chinese culture.

Julien des Monstiers