VIP Day: 2015.9.8
Public Days: 2015.9 - 13
Wen Wu moved to Germany in the 90s and he graduated from the master class of Dusseldorf State Arts Academy, Germany. He also held many international solo shows and was featured in many of Europe's leading galleries and private collections. Wen Wu recently returned to China and became active in the Chinese contemporary art scene. He has developed an unprecedented painting technique of building thick layers of paints by hand then slicing them with machines, creating tension and contrast of the handmade and the machine precision, implying the feeling of humanity against destiny.
Having spent 20 years living and creating artwork in Germany, submerging himself in the country’s culture, history, language and environment, Wen Wu began to reflect on the history of painting and how to liberate the tradional compositions of the artform in a new and exciting way.
Wen Wu became fascinated with a food cutting machine he used daily in Germany, which propelled him touse a large cutting machine as the main tool in creating his master pieces. Wen Wu uses this machine to carve a thick layer of oil paint on canvas, in hopes to expose undefined lines that are normally hidden deep under the layers of colour he piles on canvas.
Wen Wu tries to simulate the creative processes of machine-made and man-made works of art. He creates work with a thick paint "cutter," in the process of his creation he works towards capturing the first distorted moment of a new picture when it isbeing sliced, where both time and the concept of destruction are questioned in one space. The thick layer of paint he slices into two, emphasizes a "destruction" and “creation”, “past” and “present” of an image. Wen Wu's work opens up a new painting dimension and visual rhethoric.