Installation image of Stegosaurus and Triceratops in "The Revival of Tradition"

These works are the latest from the "Transformation" series, created by Wu Jian'an in 2020. Elements of the works of this series are all from Seven Layered Shell, a large-scale installation by Wu in 2011.

In Seven Layered Shell, Wu creates 186 different figures, some of which are from Classic of Mountains and Seas (as known as Shan Hai Jing), a Chinese classic text and a compilation of mythic geography and beasts. Wu portrays these eccentric and exiled beasts. And meanwhile, he combines them with his creation of ironic cartoons, visualization of slangs, graffiti, T-shirts, as well as elements in Christian, Buddhistic and Hindu mythologies.

As described by Professor Haun Saussy, "something simple (the outline of a human body, as plain as your own shadow when seen from a distance) turns out to be immensely complex. ... The bodies at their various levels peer at us with countless eyes or go about their business, ignoring us. ... (Wu's decision) opens their bodies' interior onto the widest cultural outside and makes it impossible to say that his art represents 'a throwback to Chinese tradition'; it's at the very least much more than that."

Taking components in the Seven Layered Shell as an alphabet, Wu creates this series of Transformation. In these works, hundreds of small figures overlap and interweave with each other, presenting his typical visual texture of complicacy and colorfulness, and compose a gigantic dinosaur. It seems to probe into the nature of being: Can we say that constituents of the visible or the imagined are parts of the well-known old stories? In other words, the complexity of the stories forms the world which we call reality.

Seven Layered Shell could be a metaphor for some social value: only if the individual finds an absolutely correct and fixed position, can a perfect whole exist. While in Transformation, Wu tries to break this formula of the relations between an individual and the community. In a chaotic correlation with each other, the individuals congregate into ambiguity as a whole. Not to be preset, the lively entirety becomes when each individual lives on his own.

It was shown in "The Revival of Tradition: Another Approach to Chinese Contemporary Art", a group exhibition at the Song Art Museum from September 25, 2020, to February 2021. The installation image is photographed by Dai Ruoying.

Courtesy of the artist.