Anne Chu
dal 7/4/2006 al 5/5/2006
Segnalato da
7/4/2006
Anne Chu
Victoria Miro Gallery, London
Her work is underpinned by a sophisticated and highly conceptual approach to form, content and colour. In her practice integrates wood, bronze, ceramic and fabric in such a way that one medium is animated by another. This exhibition includes the first pieces from two new series of work, and features a large ceramic landscape.
Anne Chu’s work is underpinned by a sophisticated and highly conceptual approach to form, content and colour. Renowned for her ability to work with a variety media, in her practice Chu integrates wood, bronze, ceramic, resin and fabric in such a way that one medium is animated by another. Textiles take on the appearance of carvings; sculptures become painted canvases. She draws inspiration from wide-ranging sources, which although at times historically specific, are employed less for their iconographic meaning and more for the subject’s potential for unraveling broader artistic ideas.
This exhibition includes the first pieces from two new series of work, and features a large ceramic landscape, three birds and a bronze. As is characteristic of Chu’s practice, the relationship between the distinct bodies of work is spatial rather than narrative-driven. The ceramic Three Rocks is a continuation of Chu’s skillful pursuit of abstract landscapes. Operating on two opposing notions of scale, the work is simultaneously suggestive of distant mountain ranges and a close-up view of a rock formation. Viewed from various positions, the Three Rocks appear either to gather themselves together or to visually break apart. The patterned glazes on the ceramics reduce the forms and directly relate to the artist’s watercolors of the same subject. These multi-colored blocks recall Chu's use of printed fabric in earlier work such as Four Mountain Views. How we look at and understand two-dimensional and three-dimensional works is what causes a dynamic dissonance in Chu's newest sculpture.
Three exquisite birds - a pigeon, bluebird and starling - typify the ingenuity with which Chu renders her subject matter. The birds are life-sized embroidered figures made with computer driven embroidery, and further prioritize conflation of drawing and sculpture as a basis for the artist’s work. Although the computer is used as a tool, the intervention of Chu’s own hand to manipulate and redefine the language the programme generates affects a result akin to drawing in three dimensions.
The bronze is of a figure that has previously appeared in Chu’s work, and portrays the subject of Velazquez’s El Primo (or The Favorite) - a portrait of a dwarf in the court of King Philip IV of Spain in 1644.
In addition to the sculptural works, a selection of watercolours also features in the show. Chu’s work on paper is intrinsic to the realisation and form of her sculptural practice. The drawings similarly waver between representation and abstraction, density and openness, offering the artist a different means of exploring formal concerns.
Anne Chu lives and works in New York. She received her MFA from Columbia University in 1985. In 2005 Chu had a major solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami. Her work has also been exhibited at a number of other institutions including the Westfalischer Kunstverein, Munster, the Berkeley Art Museum, University of California, the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Cleveland Centre for Contemporary Art. She was included in the 2004 Carnegie International in Pittsburgh and her work has been acknowledged through awards from Anonymous Was a Woman, the Penny McCall Award in 2001, the Joan Mitchell Foundation grant in 1999 and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Competition in 1997.
Image: Two Legs, 2001, cast urethane 62 x 22 x 22 inches
Private View, Saturday 8 April, 6 - 8pm
Victoria Miro Gallery
16 Wharf Road London N1 7RW
open Tuesday to Saturday 10am to 6pm
admission free