A vast section of the history of Western art of the 20th century is shaped by the activity of artists who share the experience of exile, desired or suffered, temporary or definitive, between pain and openness to others. other worlds.
Among them, Mao To Lai is one of the few painters from Vietnam. Probably the child of a French soldier, he was separated from his family and sent to France shortly after 1954, the year that marked the end of the Indochina War.
Starting from nothing, but driven from the start by a fierce desire to adapt to the life and pictorial practices of the Parisian scene, he finally gave up oil on canvas to devote himself exclusively to ink on paper. The exhibition offers a glimpse of this work on paper.
MAO first expressed, at the turn of the 1970s, his trouble with human behavior and the " bitter violence of reality "* sometimes flirting with black humor of Roland Topor (a friend, it seems) or of Tomi Ungerer (The Party, 1966).
Then moving on to brush and wash, he gradually reconnects with sources - technique and images - relegated to his subconscious. The signs of reminiscence are therefore more present.
Suffering from complete deafness, Mao To Laï drew on painting for means of affirmation, but also of escape.
From his works arise two contradictory and strangely intertwined feelings : endless restlessness, and the desire to rely on the contemplation of simple things.
Rather than expressing a way of thinking, " Mémoire d'image " - a set produced over more than a decade - establishes an elementary relationship to life, in which are put on the same level and articulated the personal and collective dimensions, the intimate and the political.
* Formula of Roland Topor.