Donald Young

Anne Chu

16 Feb - 07 Apr 2009

© Anne Chu
Hanging rock (one), 2007
Glazed ceramic
15 x 13 x 15 inches (38 x 33 x 38 cm)
ANNE CHU

Friday, February 16 th to April 7, 2009

The Donald Young Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new sculptures and monotype prints by New York based artist Anne Chu.
In the main gallery is a group of ceramic landscape sculptures whose forms are created from sinuous, intertwined lines. With these sculptures Chu brings into three dimensions the forms of contour landscape drawings, further reducing this already abstracted method of representation. Two large-scale mountains, each comprised of three stacked forms, stand on a large wood platform while four rocklike forms are suspended from thick twine. The spatial relationship between the standing and hanging forms creates a sense of perspective, of a vast landscape with mountains both near and far. With this installation Chu also challenges notions of weight and material. The large heavy stacked landscapes are held together by their own weight while the hanging ceramic forms defy their own heft as they lightly dangle from the ceiling.
Three life-size embroidered fabric birds perched on high metal stands are dispersed throughout the galleries. The embroidery is created with the use of a computer, this process allows for a great deal of manipulation, therefore making the process close to drawing which emphasizes Chu's interest in the conflation of drawing and sculpture.
A bronze figure El Primo II continues Chu's interest in the figure of Velazquez's dwarf from the court of King Philip IV of Spain. Through the employment of an increased scale, the dwarf now comes closer to normal human scale. Fleur de lis that decorate his coat are raised in relief creating a sculptural pattern. The sculpture is originally molded in clay and wood giving a lively surface of different textures.
Also included in the exhibition are monotype prints that should be seen in combination with the sculptures as studies of landscape rocks and birds. Through overlapping imagery and differed scale Chu creates an abstracted landscape in which birds hover within rocky, contoured landscapes.
This marks Anne Chu's third solo-exhibition at the Donald Young Gallery. Recent exhibitions include a major solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Miami and the Weatherspoon Art Gallery in Greensboro, North Carolina. Chu's work was included in the 2004 Carnegie International in Pittsburgh and in 2001 Chu was the recipient of the Anonymous Was a Woman and Penny McCall Foundation awards.
 

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