Christophe Stibio

Having undertaken fine art training under the tutelage of Chinese master painters, French born artist Christophe Stibio’s resulting practice revolves around a work ethic combining patience, control and an astute awareness of time.

The large scale works that Christophe is currently undertaking for this major solo show are constructed from rice paper and pigment inks on canvas. This technique – adapted from traditional Chinese painting methods – creates a deeply layered picture field with a range of tonal variations, from the palest echo to the deepest saturation of colour.

Exploring ideas of becoming and emergence, Christophe’s representations of the desert regions of southern New South Wales capture the experience of an optical mirage. Shifting masses of hills and dust merge, shadow and light undulate and the whole field of space and time collide in an infinite moment.

“As a process calligraphy opens a way to understand history and civilization, since one doesn’t hold a brush with the hand but with the mind. More than anywhere else, China was the place where I learnt the dualistic process of following rules and then knowing how to let go of them. This is where I put into practice the possibility of exploring and expressing the currents of my thoughts and emotions.

As a new Australian citizen, preoccupied with the desert landscape, I cannot help but think about Philip Jones in his last book Ochre and Rust, who says as he gazes at a land that stretches out in front of him until Lake Torrens “the profound calm of this scene seems to deny history, the fabric torn since the first encounters…”. (Stibio 2010)