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Lot Essay
Gu Wenda was born in Shanghai in 1955. He graduated with a master's degree in Chinese Painting from the Academy of Fine Arts in Hangzhou studying under Lu Yanshao. In the 1980s, Gu Wenda, who was cultivated in Chinese calligraphy, became deeply influenced by Western philosophy and expressed his interest in Nietzsche and Surrealism on multiple occasions. The Dangerous Chessboard Leaves the Ground : Closet for the Viewers' Red Costumes, 1987 (Lot 106) is an installation made from rice (xuan) paper and three ornaments of red clothing which was included in his first solo exhibition outside of China at York University, Canada.
On the paper, Gu Wenda renders a partially visible beast with highly gestural strokes on the left half of the painting. This composition illustrates a marked departure from traditional ink wash paintings. Informed by Western art, Gu exploits this 'cutting-off' framing technique to make the beast seem as though it were jumping out of the painting. The right part of the painting is an abstract landscape that symbolize freedom of the spirit. His works evoke Francis Bacon's monstrous illustrations of "tronies", which sought to represent the ugliness of the human condition. On the bottom of the paper, he alludes to the main thematic issue of the painting with a Chinese proverb. He perceives red as a colour with fearful undertone and the red clothing symbolizes the obstacles he has to overcome as an artist.
Although he was trained in the Chinese ink wash tradition, Gu Wenda decided to move to the United States after the New Wave movement in 1985. His departure from China allowed the artist to synthesize his past experience in China with the Western imagination in his independent visual language.
In his later works, he borrows the calligraphic nature of Chinese characters; but dismantles, restructures and decomposes them to produce undecipherable motifs. By casting off the functional meaning inherent in traditional Chinese character, Gu rediscovers the aesthetic value of the abstract forms.
On the paper, Gu Wenda renders a partially visible beast with highly gestural strokes on the left half of the painting. This composition illustrates a marked departure from traditional ink wash paintings. Informed by Western art, Gu exploits this 'cutting-off' framing technique to make the beast seem as though it were jumping out of the painting. The right part of the painting is an abstract landscape that symbolize freedom of the spirit. His works evoke Francis Bacon's monstrous illustrations of "tronies", which sought to represent the ugliness of the human condition. On the bottom of the paper, he alludes to the main thematic issue of the painting with a Chinese proverb. He perceives red as a colour with fearful undertone and the red clothing symbolizes the obstacles he has to overcome as an artist.
Although he was trained in the Chinese ink wash tradition, Gu Wenda decided to move to the United States after the New Wave movement in 1985. His departure from China allowed the artist to synthesize his past experience in China with the Western imagination in his independent visual language.
In his later works, he borrows the calligraphic nature of Chinese characters; but dismantles, restructures and decomposes them to produce undecipherable motifs. By casting off the functional meaning inherent in traditional Chinese character, Gu rediscovers the aesthetic value of the abstract forms.