Anne Chu

Anne Chu mines the history of figuration across cultures and eras to create sculptures that evoke ritual, storytelling, and mythology. Her wide-ranging sources are employed more for their capacity to trigger the imagination than for their particular references. Chu carefully arranges her figures in groupings, achieving the overall effect of a timeless, placeless field of players primed to perform some enchanted narrative. In her latest works, life-sized ceramic creatures she calls "Hellish Spirits" derive equally from ancient Chinese sculptures and the fevered dreams of the science fiction cult figure Philip K. Dick; while the three, freestanding, vertical "landscapes" make clear reference to Indian and Bhutanese prayer banners. The single bronze sculpture in this group is inspired by Southeast Asian guardian figures, but the flowery costume, peaked cap, and stump-like base also call to mind Western images of the Greek god Pan and the pagan "Green Man." Chu's juxtaposition of such wide-ranging images points to mythic archetypes—the motifs and stories that are universally resonant and occur across cultures.

Selected Bibliography:

Anne Chu. Exhibition brochure. Ohio: Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, 1998.

Anne Chu. Exhibition brochure. Texas: Dallas Museum of Art, 1998.

Schwabsky, Barry. "Anne Chu." Art on Paper 2 (September–October 1997): 20–21.

Schwendener, Martha. "Anne Chu: 303 Gallery." Artforum 42, no. 6 (February 2004): 151.

Volk, Gregory. "Anne Chu at A/C Project Room." Art in America 85 (February 1997): 96.

Links:

303 Gallery