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Lot Essay
Silk Road (Form A:a-2) (Lot 46) is a work from the United Nations project. Gu Wenda creates a circle with human hair from people of different ethnic groups. He believes that by using modern biological science and genetic technology, all information of human beings can be gathered through the DNA contained in a single strand of hair. Bearing this in mind, Gu portrays the busy activities of cultural and commercial exchanges between Mainland and the Arab world in history.
Gu Wenda started the United Nations project in 1993, the signature work of this Chinese artist when he conquered the Western art scene. "At that time, artists who were excluded from the US and British art circles had all faced the problem of marginalisation. I've been perplexed for a long time and was released until I created the United Nations . It's composed of strands of hair from over 400 million people, showing mutual understanding and acceptance between different cultures," he once said.
Once studied under Chinese master Lu Yan-shao, Gu Wenda had a formal training on Chinese calligraphy, landscape painting and stamp carving. The bottom part of Silk Road (Form A:a-2) is an ink painting applied with his signature style of disproportion and fragmented calligraphy, one that bears similarities with the variant Chinese character joy in Seal Script.
Gu Wenda started the United Nations project in 1993, the signature work of this Chinese artist when he conquered the Western art scene. "At that time, artists who were excluded from the US and British art circles had all faced the problem of marginalisation. I've been perplexed for a long time and was released until I created the United Nations . It's composed of strands of hair from over 400 million people, showing mutual understanding and acceptance between different cultures," he once said.
Once studied under Chinese master Lu Yan-shao, Gu Wenda had a formal training on Chinese calligraphy, landscape painting and stamp carving. The bottom part of Silk Road (Form A:a-2) is an ink painting applied with his signature style of disproportion and fragmented calligraphy, one that bears similarities with the variant Chinese character joy in Seal Script.