Gaël de Kerguenec (柯恺乐kē kǎilè in Chinese)

Gaël de Kerguenec is a French painter. He lives in France an in China mostly in Paris, Chongqing and Chengdu where a museum with his name will open. He learned 10 years the Traditional Chinese ink painting by observing and communicating with Chinese famous Masters but never he got influenced about the topics and the technics. Always free of all influences, he develops his own technics, his own esthetics and his own abstract themes.

Gael’s background is quite unusual, tight with a strong feeling of freedom. Coming from a PhD in Linguistics, he taught in the very prestigious Paris Sorbonne University. Besides his linguistics Majoring he got 3 Master degrees in Computer Science and Computational Linguistics and worked as an Engineer for Lucent Technologies in New Jersey’s Bell Labs. In 2005, the passion of languages brought him to China where he became Director of Alliance Française in Dalian as a French Diplomat for the French Foreign Office on charge of the whole region of North East for French language trainee School and French Cultural Center. As a link between Occidental and Oriental Cultures his contact with both sides artists he became himself an artist, starting the fourth step of his amazing land eclectic life. Since 2012 he is also the CEO of his Sichuan Company Oukaida and President of the Artistic exchange Association Acadart based in Paris. His lightning artist’s career lead him to have many exhibition all across China but also in Europe, Swiss and France and he has now his personal Museum which is unique in China.

About his Art, Gaël de Kerguenec has pushed to the extreme techniques of ink dilution and brush manipulation to approach completely unexplored and unique techniques.

In 2016 and 2017, Gael explored some new way to paint, with some secret technics of his own. For example, some paintings have been painted in fusion with the nature like the wind and the rain.

Philosophically, his art follows an approach related to the evolution of man in the world, the individual and his balance Yin Yang, his painting explored relationships with others, relationship to beliefs and then production consumption society. In Chinese philosophy and history, this is reflected in the currents of thought: Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism and the tendencies of society towards materialism. These periods are respectively entitled: Purity, Complexity, Colors and Smog. To simplify understanding, we can see in Purity a binary Yin Yang relationship between the black ink and the whiteness of the paper in a very refined relationship created by the transparency of water. Complexity multiplies and interweaves these elements in an overall movement filled with details to the hints of arabesques. The Color arrives as an intrusion into this equilibrium of black and white, giving a new dimension and finally, the Smog obscures the whole paper where previously established forms can be perceived behind, felt or even imagined in these gray mists obtained by complex mixtures of ink.

Finally, independently of this philosophical journey, Gaël de Kerguenec created a Latin calligraphy inspired by Arabic and Cursive Chinese calligraphy. His unique and original French Calligraphy mixes dancing letters sometimes to the limit of the decipherable, a permanent creation of Letters distorted, stretched, staged in elements reminiscent of their meaning. The calligraphic texts are generally original poems of the artist. The pictorial environment can be linked to his different philosophical periods.

The paintings signature is associated with the Chines seal “LE“ (happiness) which is the Chinese name of Gael and the wax seal representing the heraldic armorial of his aristocratic family.

Aristocrat from one of the oldest noble family in France, Gael le Chauff de Kerguenec always associate his signature to his family (Le Chauff de Kerguenec) seal witnessing more than one thousand years of history contained in his armorial bearings.

柯恺乐（Gaël de Kerguenec），法国艺术家，常年往返于法国巴黎和中国的重庆和成都之间。以他名字命名的个人博物馆即将在成都开馆。

 十年磨一剑。在与中国著名绘画大师的切磋和交流中，柯恺乐通过自己的体验和观察掌握了运用中国传统的水墨作画技巧。青出于蓝而胜于蓝，他拜师学艺，发扬光大其精华，但又“酿蜜不留花”，以自己独到的审美取向创造了别具风格的绘画技巧和抽象主题。

柯恺乐思维敏捷，崇尚自由，阅历丰富，有着与常人不一样的人生背景：拥有语言学博士学历、巴黎索邦大学任教经历，同时还拥有三个计算机科学和计算机语言学方面的硕士学位，曾在美国新泽西贝尔实验室担任过工程师。出于对语言的热爱，他于2005年来到中国，担任大连法语联盟主人，负责东北地区法语教学和中法文化交流。作为中西文化交流的使者，他经常为中法两国画家的交流牵线搭桥。

画家生涯的开始给他的人生翻开了新的一页。2012年，他创办了四川欧恺达教育公司，并担任法国欧恺达协会会长，专门从事中西艺术交流。在短短时间里，他已在中国、法国和瑞士等多个国家举办了画展，并拥有自己的个人博物馆，如此丰富的经历实属罕见。

柯恺乐的艺术可概括为“独特”二字。其运笔的力度、调墨的浓淡、色彩的搭配以及在宣纸上的挥洒，在每幅作品中都有独到的表现，给人耳目一新之感。2016年和2017年，他探索出了独一无二的绘画技巧，在创作过程中将自然元素与作画时巧遇的风和雨相结合就是一个典型的例子。

从柯恺乐的作品中人们不难发现这样的哲学脉络：他的艺术经过一种有序可循和循序渐进的变化，与人类发展进程一脉相连，映衬着个体阴阳调和、自身与他者关系、宗教信仰和消费社会，与中国传统哲学历史中的道教、儒教、佛教和当今社会的物质主义倾向相呼应。这种变化在其绘画创作中表现为纯净期、繁景期、色变期与雾霾期四个阶段。简而言之，纯净期的画作通过控制画面比例与用墨多少重塑黑色墨汁与白色宣纸的关系；繁景期的画作通过符号的组合表达复杂的思想；色变期的画作在黑白之外增加第三个维度：色彩；雾霾期的画作模糊了之前塑造的画面，使观众透过灰色的迷雾产生想象。

此外，柯恺乐从阿拉伯文字和中国草书得到灵感创造出了一种以拉丁字母作画的独特艺术。此外，柯恺乐从阿拉伯文字和中国草书得到灵感创造出了一种以拉丁字母作画的独特艺术。舞动的字母，或被夸张拉长，或被改变形状，但人们又能隐约窥见这些字母组成的诗句，而这些诗句又都出自艺术家本人的原创诗作。

柯恺乐来自法国最古老的贵族。他画画的签名旁都会有印章,这块印章承载着 一千年的家族历史。在印章上刻有一只向前张开爪子的鸽子,代表着公元 880 年家族祖先作为骑士越过海洋从英国来到法国布列塔尼打仗;两个相对的月牙 是为了纪念公元 1096 年祖先参加为解放耶路撒冷的十字军东征。