EXHIBITION "Genesis of the Celestial Emire"

12 JUNE - 19 SEPTEMBER 2021
MUSEUM OF ASIAN ARTS - ARENAS

Genesis of the Celestial Empire is a new exhibition in France co-produced by the Musée départemental des arts asiatiques (Nice) and the Baur Foundation (Geneva), with the generous support of Mr. Sam Myers.

Because of its hardness, jade is committed to sustainability. During archaeological excavations, the precious gems are the best preserved cultural remains. The first cutting tools discovered at xiaogushan's site in Haicheng (Liaoning province) are believed to be 12,000 years old. As for the jue, jade split rings used as earrings, they were exhumed in numbers in the Xinglongwa (ca. 6200–5200 BC) and Zhaobaogou (ca. 5200–4500 BC). As a result, many today consider that the work of jade would have a history of some 8,000 years.

Since the Neolithic, China has maintained a fundamental link with the cosmos. The world then rests on the Sky-Earth duo, and man, powerless, attends their incessant exchanges. With the emergence of the first royal dynasties (seventeenth–third centuries BC), shamans, sorcerers, soothsayers, philosophers, sages are busy putting the world in order. Proceeding by analogy, they give concrete form to their speculations by resorting to a fantastic bestiary. Under the imperial dynasties (221 BC–1911 AD), the Sky-Earth-Man triad prevailed. Although an attentive observer at the heart of this universe, Man is now called to immortality. The exhibition is an invitation to travel over more than forty centuries this itinerary enamelled with rare works, shaped in a stone of eternity, jade.

Revealing and embracing the evolutions of this metaphorical vision of the world, the jade objects show a profound plastic evolution: the chisper becomes a sculptor in his own right, engaging his creations in the three dimensions. If, at the beginning, the representations border on abstraction, gradually a language emerges that undulates on the surface, before penetrating the material until it is shaped by transforming it from the inside, to bring out a powerful realism based on attentive observation.

Free admission