The H&R Block Artspace at the Kansas City Art Institute is pleased to present the exhibition, "Wenda Gu: from middle kingdom to biological millennium," which will be on view at the Artspace from June 7 to July 12. A public reception will take place from 6 to 8 p.m., Friday, June 6. The exhibition reopens in the fall from Aug. 19 to Sept. 6.
One of the most important artists to emerge from China in recent decades, Wenda Gu was active in the Chinese avant-garde before emigrating to the United States in 1987. Since then, he has mined tradition and pursued innovation in works that deal intelligently with globalism and transculturalism to present an idealized unification of humanity.
Best known for an ongoing worldwide art project entitled "united nations," Gu has created a series of monumental, site-specific installations made of human hair gathered from across the globe. The most recent of these installations, "united nations -- 7561 kilometers," was created especially for this exhibition. Architectural in scale, Gu's "united nations" monuments incorporate hair from thousands of individuals from different countries as a metaphor for the mixture of races that the artist predicts could eventually unite humanity.
Comprised of 12 scrims or panels of human hair and one continuous human hair braid, "united nations -- 7561 kilometers" takes the form of a temple. Gu's pseudo-characters, script-like marks invented by Gu that combine Chinese, Hebrew, English, Hindi and Arabic characters, adorn each scrim. In language, Gu seeks to stress the importance of language and knowledge as it relates to understanding and misunderstanding between cultures, countries, religions or races
The second ongoing project by Gu in the exhibition is "forest of stones steles -- retranslation & rewriting of tang poetry." Ancient stone tablets or stele have a long tradition in China. In this installation, six hand-quarried and hand-carved black stones, traditionally called ink jade king, are engraved with an English translation of Tang dynasty poetry and a second interpretation of the poetry based on the artist's sound translations. Images and essences of the language are repeated in six beautiful ink rubbings made from the original stones.
Five additional works created between 1993 and 2002, including "Enigma of Birth," "Hair Brick," "Tea Alchemy" and "Ink Alchemy," reveal the artist's constant search for new ideas and investigations of new materials for his work.
Wenda Gu was born in Shanghai, China, in 1955. His work has been seen in one-person exhibitions at the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco; Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong; Utsunomiya Museum of Art, Japan; National Gallery of Australia, Canberra; and Queens Museum of Art, New York. His work also has been included in significant group exhibitions, including Second Johannesburg Biennale (1997, curated by Okwui Enwezor), China Avant-Garde (1989), Inside Out: New Chinese Art (1999), Power of the Word (2000), Kwangju Biennale (2000) and the Singapore Arts Festival (2002), among others.
Accompanying the exhibition is the first comprehensive publication on Wenda Gu. Published and distributed by MIT Press, "Wenda Gu: art from middle kingdom to biological millennium" will be available for purchase at the Artspace.
"Wenda Gu: from middle kingdom to biological millennium," a national tour, and accompanying exhibition catalog have been organized by the H&R Block Artspace at the Kansas City Art Institute, the University of North Texas Art Gallery and the Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art with generous support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, the H&R Block Foundation and the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency.
The Artspace is open free to the public from noon to 5 p.m., Tuesday through Friday; and noon to 6 p.m., Saturday. The Artspace will be open by appointment only July 14 through Aug. 16. The Artspace is located at 16 East 43rd Street, one block east of Main Street.
The Kansas City Art Institute is a private, independent four-year college of fine art and design, awarding bachelor of fine arts degrees in art history; ceramics; design and illustration; fiber; painting and printmaking; photography; new media; sculpture; and studio art with an emphasis on creative writing. Founded in 1885, the Kansas City Art Institute has been named one of America's Best Small Colleges(r).
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