For Immediate
Release
Wu
Junyong
Cloud’s
Nightmare
Fabien Fryns Fine
Art
December 11, 2010 – February 12,
2011
Opening: Saturday, December 11, 6-8
p.m.
Fabien Fryns Fine Art is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition on the
West Coast by multimedia artist Wu Junyong. The exhibition features his new
eight-and-a-half-minute long computer-generated animation Cloud’s
Nightmare, which is accompanied by three sets of oil-on-canvas, three brass
objects and four painting installations depicting the characters and sequences
in the
animation.
Born in 1978 in Fujian province, Wu attended the prestigious China Academy of
Fine Arts in Hangzhou, where he earned his BA in printmaking and MFA in new
media arts. Since his childhood, Wu has made the world’s idiocies the
focus of his creativity. Inheriting a strong sense of mockery and rebellion from
historical figures in art history, such as Pieter Brueghel the Elder and
Dürer, Wu uses his art and his dark humor as the instrument to express his
acute criticism and protest. Beginning in 2003, Wu has used Adobe Flash to
create ridiculed and whimsical animations reminiscent of shadow puppetry, an
ancient form of motion picture storytelling using opaque cutout figures in front
of an illuminated backdrop to create the illusion of moving images, which bring
to life folklores and fantasies. The theatrical protagonists in Wu’s
animations for the past 6 years have been men who wear tall cone-hats. These
silhouette figures make a grand entry to a generic public space (often a public
square with a monument in the center) at the beginning of each episode. They
first freeze in a long pose and then adjust their cone-hats. These heightened
dramatic moments of introduction once again reassemble the tradition of Chinese
opera and shadow puppetry. Besides the traditional repertoire of stories,
Wu’s concept for his motion pictures was also inspired by the irony in
Chinese idioms. The disconnection between the metaphorical references of idioms
and their visualized graphics intrigues Wu. The tall cone-hats in all Wu’s
animations, for instance, were a result from the idiom “to put on a tall
hat.” To put a tall hat on someone is to excessively extol someone, who is
often with power and authority. China is rich in idioms, but there is not one
single idiom dictionary. Wu has spent a few years actively collecting idioms and
then illustrating them into iconography. In his Flash videos, he reverses this
process by inserting iconography in his loosely orchestrated narratives to imply
the embedded metaphors. This unique discourse presents a challenge: to extract
the symbolism from the iconography depends largely upon one’s cultural and
linguistic knowledge in Chinese. However, regardless of how much his implication
can be elicited, one does not fail to understand Wu’s acute cynicism
towards authority and its oppression of individuality. “The so-called
individuality within the context of China refers to publicly dissenting. With
public spaces diminishing and being muzzled, voices can only be heard in the
margins of society. To me, in such a ludicrous and suppressed totalitarian
society, fables are the best way for one to protest, to protect and to voice his
opinion,” Wu says. Cloud’s Nightmare is Wu’s 7th animation in
the sequel that articulates the absurdity existing between reality and illusion,
between darkness and illumination and between humor and ridicule. The original
Chinese title of this animation is A Breakout of Birds and Beasts, a Chinese
idiom referring to the state of chaos and abandonment when a regime is
defeated.
Wu Junyong’s work has been exhibited or collected internationally by
institutes and museums, such as the National Museum of Contemporary Art (Seoul),
Museum of Cinema (Turin), the third Guangzhou Triennial, Streaming Festival 3rd
Edition (the Hague), the third China New Media Art Festival (Hangzhou) the White
Rabbit Museum (Sydney), and Museum of Contemporary Art
(Shanghai).
Cloud’s Nightmare, the debut solo exhibition by Wu Junyong in Los Angeles,
will be on view at Fabien Fryns Fine Art from December 12, 2010 through February
12, 2011. A reception for the artist will be held on Saturday December 11, from
6 to 8
p.m.
