Lot 88: Zhu Wei , China China bronze

signed in Chinese and numbered 6/12 bronze

figure 1: 79 by 43 by 19 in. 200.6 by 109 by 48.2 cm.; figure 2: 74 7/8 by 34 1/4 by 22 1/2 in. 190 by 87 by 57 cm.

Similar works exhibited:
Beijing, Red Gate Gallery, Zhu Wei Works Exhibition , April, 2006
New York, Plum Blossoms Gallery, Corporate Corporeality: Chinese Artists Re-examining the Body in the Age of Global Capitalism , April, 2004
Hong Kong, Plum Blossoms Gallery, Zhu Wei - Another Perspective , May, 2004
Paris, Espace Cardin, Paris-Pékin , October, 2002, p. 271, illustrated in color
Hong Kong and Singapore, Plum Blossoms Gallery, Zhu Wei Diary , 2000, p. 386, illustrated in color

Zhu Wei, Hebei, 2005, p. 111, illustrated in color

Executed in 2007.
Zhu Wei was born in Beijing in 1966 and joined the People's Liberation Army at age 16, where he was trained in traditional painting techniques at the PLA Art College (1985-89). First active in two-dimensional media as an accomplished ink painter and watercolorist, Zhu created whimsically "fat headed" figures, often military personnel, which bear a striking resemblance to the artist himself. (Lot 87 is a representative early work.) Similar figures populate Zhu's later sculptural work, which in larger scale versions achieve a pronounced monumentality despite their endearing humor.

Zhu's best known sculptural series, China China (Lots 1, 88, 136) was begun in 1998 and features a pair of faceless, corpulent figures positioned one after the other, as though in military formation. Han dynasty terracotta figurines were the source of inspiration for Zhu's series, of which editions exist in bronze and painted fiberglass, and in both upright and forward-leaning positions. The three China China works included in the present sale exhibit the development of Zhu's work with the motif, ranging from the early fiberglass sculpture of 1999 (Lot 136), to the diminutive bronze version of 2003 (Lot 1), to the imposing bronze monuments of more recent vintage pictured here.

In each work, the artist simulates the dusty, weathered surfaces of the original objects to create contemporary figures clad in the "Mao" suit, their facial features effaced. The caricatured figures, imposing symbols of China's faceless masses, seem excavated from an archaeological site in the hinterlands of the Chinese psyche, where memories of the Qin Dynasty's grandeur and the Cultural Revolution's collectivism are equally present. As such they express the questioning stance regarding the past and the future that is so prevalent among artists of Zhu's generation.