黑料不打烊

Chambers Fine Art New York is pleased to announce the opening on September 11th, 2008 of The Heaven of Nine Levels by Wu Jian鈥檃n. Born in Beijing in 1980, Wu graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing in 2005 where he studied in the Department of Folk Art. Like his distinguished professor Lu Shengzhong, Wu鈥檚 fascination with folk art soon led to the evolution of a personal style that stands in distinct contrast to prevailing modes of expression in contemporary Chinese art. The fantastic persuasion of Wu鈥檚 imagination was immediately apparent in Daydreams, his first solo exhibition at Chambers Fine Art New York in 2006. His disturbed state of mind during the SARS epidemic led to a series of virtuoso paper-cuts that explored the full range of effects available in his chosen means of expression. The following year he turned to stainless steel in the monumental work Execute Chiyou by Lingchi, (a.k.a Lingchi Chiyou, Kill His Eighty-one Brothers 鈥� Our Chinese Civilization Was Then to Create a Brilliant History of Five Thousand Years). For the current exhibition Wu delves deeper into the Chinese mythology and culture that so fascinates him, moving away from paper-cuts towards carved and pierced ox-hide as his medium. In an extensive interview with Yan An in the exhibition catalog, Wu describes his growing enthusiasm for "anything related to Old China鈥濃�攏ot the classical China of calligraphy and literati culture鈥攂ut the one of paper-cuts, shadow puppets, frescoes and carved stone sculptures like the ones found in the Dunhuang Grottoes. Fascinated with the literature of ghosts and spirits, Wu uses the linear means of expression derived from these sources to create his The Heaven of Nine Levels in which nine kinds of animals including bird, human-faced bird, winged human, tiger, frog, giant salamander and fish express "logic and power". This tour-de-force is accompanied by two further works carved in ox-hide, Xingtian and Head of Chiyou. In order to re