Shada: The Art of Energy
Shada’s showroom, a living sculpture where home and studio merge into an immersive gallery. Every corner reflects his experiments with form, texture, and light, inviting visitors to step directly into the heart of creation.
Paris-born Michel Marcel Saada, known professionally as Shada, began his artistic journey over thirty years ago when curiosity and wanderlust brought him to his “Mount Athos”: the tranquil, secluded landscapes of Laos. A successful entrepreneur, it is ultimately art and creativity that define him. Even in his earliest experiments, Shada sought to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary, turning coconut shells into aboriginal-style mosaics and crafting delicate marquetry from inlaid eggs and rice seeds.
“Each canvas records my energy in the moment. It is both a reflection of intuition and a conversation with the material itself.”
Exposed largely to contemporary influences, from Soulages’ bold action paintings to Pollock’s dripped canvases, from Richter’s abstraction to Rothko’s emotional expressionism, Shada has absorbed inspiration without imitation. Each canvas becomes a space for discovery, where line, color, and pictorial space interact in novel ways. Every blank surface invites adventure, a continuation of the curiosity that marked his early travels.
Shada’s open-air studio in Vientiane, a space where experimentation and intuition guide each brushstroke, and where every canvas becomes a journey into color, texture, and energy.
Shada’s process is expansive and experimental. Paint is poured, dripped, brushed, pressed, and layered with freedom, yet each gesture is underpinned by mastery. Blots and splashes may appear random, but they emerge from years of refined skill, evolving naturally into a distinctive style. He describes his paintings as records of his energy and state of mind, blending spontaneity and contemplation into immersive, textured compositions. Some canvases glow from within; others explode in movement and color. Across them all, Shada’s work reveals a deeply personal narrative, passionate, turbulent, and alive.
Two of Shada’s wood sculptures, crafted from antique beams, displayed against the backdrop of his living space where canvases and artworks converge. Each piece embodies the dialogue between tradition and contemporary creativity that defines his practice.
The home of the artist itself becomes part of this journey. Rebuilt from the ground up, Shada’s house in Laos is a living sculpture. The open workshop in the garden and the gallery space stand side by side, allowing guests to step directly into the heart of creation. Here, one can sense where Shada worked, surrounded by echoes of experimentation and craft. His paintings engage the senses and imagination, weaving silent narratives that demand to be felt rather than merely seen.
More than an exhibition, it is an intimate journey into the alchemy of art and space, where materials, intuition, and imagination converge, inviting audiences to look beyond the visible and discover the hidden stories within each work.