AppaRitions

Drawn in by the freshness of the morning, our eyes still clouded, as if held back within a dreamlike world, we find ourselves wandering through these Apparitions by Ma Sibo. Like in the "dreams" of Gérard de Nerval, we are lost and captivated by these suspended moments, where night slowly gives way to the pale, gentle light of early morning. Ma Sibo, a young Chinese painter trained at the Fine Arts school of Toulon and Nîmes and now living and working in Beijing, here pushes his art beyond the enclosed, interior spaces of his earlier works. He moves beyond the confines of everyday reality to embrace enchanting worlds, both familiar and improbable. Fairgrounds, parks, forests— their reality matters little. They serve only as an opportunity to capture the elusive atmosphere of a fleeting light. Like J.M.W Turner, Ma Sibo reveals himself as a true "painter of light". Yet rather than depicting vast landscapes with blazing skies, he focuses on details, tightening his compositions around small objects that might seem anecdotal, but in fact act as catalysts for this light. Their curves and materials, along with their reflections in water, become surfaces that absorb sources of light within misty landscapes, reflecting them as shimmering or almost blinding brilliance—surfaces upon which the eye cannot linger without losing itself. Through this singular poetics, Ma Sibo leads us into a contemplation of our inner selves and our childhood memories, drawn from a distant past and bathed in a hazy, nebulous glow. Alone before these canvases, we find ourselves projected into the heart of a troubling yet enveloping and comforting melancholic void. Dream… Imprints… Reminiscence… Apparitions. Gérard de Nerval, Aurélia