Anne Chu

Anne Chu (1959 – July 25, 2016) was an American sculptor. She created mixed-media sculptures, working in fabric, leather, metal, porcelian, resin, and wood. Her work has been exhibited at the Berkeley Art Museum, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Her work is in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Art.

Early life Chu was born in 1959 in New York City. Her parents came from China, and her father was a mathematics professor at Columbia University. When she was in middle school, her family moved to Westchester County, north of the city. She graduated from the Philadelphia College of Art (now the University of the Arts) in 1982 and received an MFA from Columbia University in 1985.

Artistic style

Despite being a Chinese American, Anne Chu does not identify closely with Chinese culture. Instead, her sculptures "reflect a thorough knowledge of world art, much of it coming from Western sources and years of going to galleries and museums". Chu's focus on art history has resulted in a singular vision, affecting her works which "place a contemporary sensibility in genuine dialogue with the past", giving an "ad hoc, but never excessively informal, sense of the present". For example, she uses "traditional Chinese artifacts as a base from which to work". She has remade "T'ang dynasty ceramic funerary figures, sculpted Asian and Western–inspired landscapes, and painted luminous watercolors characterized by a subtle tension between abstraction and figuration".

Chu's work consists largely of bold mixed-media sculptures in "wood, metal, resin, fabric, leather, or porcelain, as well as delicate watercolors and ink-based works on paper". She often combined "figures and animals with elements drawn from folklore; just as often, however, her work could be nearly unrecognizable from one piece to the next. In deliberately remaking herself this way, Chu developed a unique visual language, celebrated in more than 30 solo exhibitions over a 25-year period".

Works and publications Ballplayer on Horse In Chu's Ballplayer on Horse (1998), "an elaborately carved and painted male figure sits atop a bronze horse". Bronze horses, together with their riders, are often mass-produced, accompanying a nobleman in burial as the representation of his lifelong possession. "Chu's use of a figure mounted on a horse results from a general interest in these types of burial figures". Knowing that different materials create a distinct visual presence, Chu pairs bronze with wood. In this sculpture, "the bronze horse shares a patchy, expressive painting style with the figure. Head cocked to one side, one hand on his chest and the other raised in an extended gesture, the ballplayer is poised to throw". Their symbolic gestures suggest that horses and their riders not only indicate an individual's status in ancient China, but also serve as a necessity for political survival.

These characters are deprived of agency. The means through which they perceive the world are compromised by "eyes sometimes closed, sometimes only partially articulated and occasionally simply left as a pair of gouged holes". Their hands can't make a fist, denying them the possibility to grasp anything. "Even their incompleteness emphasizes their confinement to a world of material objects: wires spring out, seams show, and wood splinters or splits". They seem to be manipulated by forces beyond their recognition. On the one hand, "Chu's sculptures argue for a secret life as a materials-oriented abstraction, the formalism disguised as vernacular figuration. The ad hoc use of wood, wire, and cloth is, in this argument, only pretending to serve the theatrical content". On the other hand, the sculptures are "expressive self portraits" that reflect the social conformity and uncontrollable performances that entangle the artist.

Hanging Goat (2008) "Dangling limply from the ceiling, the goat is a marionette without a play. Its eerie deconstructed form is also reminiscent of a butchered animal". Yet the haphazardness expressed through its appearance free the viewers from this dark implication. "It is a humble creature, a modest offering — but at the same time, an unspoken challenge, like it or not".

Other exhibitions +VenueWorks exhibitedReferencesMuseum of Modern ArtLandscape (1999), Figure Self-Portrait (2002) Institute of Contemporary Art, PhiladelphiaMineral Spirits (2011) San Francisco Museum of Modern ArtBall Player Riding over a Mountain (1999), Stone Cliffs (1999) The Bonnier GalleryCardinal (2007) Anglim Gilbert GalleryPisces Underwater (2016), Flower Drawing No.1 (2011), Pipe Fish (2016), Underwater Rattus (2016), Fabullus (2012), Landscape with Flowers No.1 (2011), Grey Rattus (2016), Bust: Young Roman Boy (2012), Burial of the Sardine #2 & #7 (2016) 303 GalleryLeft of a Pair (2008), Epipsychidion (2008), Birds of Prey (2008), Dancing Girl on Wood (2008), Right in a Pair (2008), Rietberg Figurine and Head (2008), Figurine (2008), Goat with Cubes No.2 & No.3 (2008), Blue Jay (print) (2008), From a Hanging Garden (2007)

Award 1997 The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation fellowship 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship 1999 Joan Mitchell Foundation award Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation winner