Wang Keping with “Le câlin” (the embrace), mahogany, courtesy of the artist and Galerie Nathalie Obadia Paris/Brussels

Musée Guimet is always a mysterious and exotic place to visit on place d’Iéna but it has particularly great news at the moment. The new president as of November 1, Yannick Lintz, former head of the Islamic department at the Louvre, just inaugurated there the Uzbek oasis exhibition which she curated. She introduced Wang Keping, the Chinese sculptor who has lived in Paris since 1984, and is showing in the 4th floor rotunda, a new series of mahogany statues as well as a group of works in the galleries of the museum. He was assisted by his brilliant daughter and studio manager, Aline Wang and his gallerist Nathalie Obadia co-organised the exhibition. Downstairs, “Afghanistan, Shadows ad legends” shows photographs and sculptures from the museum’s collections. And “Sur le Fil” (on the thread is a tribute to Zarif design, an association of Afghan women weavers who still maintain their couture house in Kabul.

The female figure, Lady with a couette, Courtesan, Han woman, Daughter, Courtesy the artist and galerie Nathalie Obadia

The virtuosity of Wang Keping’s art and the sexuality which exudes from his mostly feminine shapes, fits very well with the collection of Chinese archeological art of the museum. Spread out on the first floor, they suddenly appear in a subtile dialogue with antique objects. Most of them are in wood which he acquires from wood merchants or from constructors. He likes to use the veins and the knots of the trunk to express love, desire, suffering…

Aline Wang is brilliant at explaining her father’s work, here with “Full Moon”, 2016, entirely sculpted in one piece of ash tree

“Trees are like human bodies, avec hard parts like bones and more tender ones like flesh, sometimes resistant, sometimes fragile. I cannot go against them”. Whether in ash wood, maple, or in oak, and for the first time in burnt mahogany from West Africa,  for the museum, he works for two years on each sculpture. The process of choosing the wood, sometimes at private forest owners’, letting it dry, sculpting it and sanding it, takes a long time. His studio is in Vendée.

Bird III, 2011, bronze, courtesy the artist and galerie Nathalie Obadia Paris/Brussels

Aline Wang was very interesting when she described her father’s love for women, fertility, eroticism which he translates with heavy but smooth and round wooden forms. One sculpture of a bird is in bronze, cast on wood.  The artist likes to use local woods and for his exhibition at Chaumont sur Loire, he sculpted a fallen oak from the park. His use of mahogany happened by chance. In 2019, he was offered the leftover of a shipment of this precious wood and learned to work on the very hard wood.

Yannick Lintz, President of Musée Guimet with Wang Keping

After climbing to the rotunda to admire the six new sculptures, make sure to go down all the way to visit the Afghanistan exhibition which includes colossal buddha hands from Bamiyan and superb buddhas.  Also see the textiles lent by Zarif design on the first floor. I bought a silk green striped coat from them over ten years ago and still get compliments for it every time I wear it. It looks like Hamid Karzai’s outfits which were so elegant. Their website is for men and women and they deliver to any country.

Embroidered Chapan, Afghanistan Kaboul 2018, Zarif Design

Musée Guimet, Wang Keping is until March 6. Afghanistan is until February 6. Also an exhibition of Afghan contemporary artists is starting on December 10 at Galerie Dominique Fiat, 16 rue des Coutures Saint Gervais.

Monumental hands from Bamijan 5 th -7 th century, Paris MNAAG, Bafa diggings 1930