Mixed media on canvas

137.5 x 91.5 cm. 54 1/8 x 36 in.

Dated, signed in English and Chinese, and titled in Chinese on the reverse
PROVENANCE
Collection of the artist's family
Private Collection, Asia

Slice Open a New World
The Break-to-make Spirit of Chu Weibor

Chu Weibor was hailed as the founder of Oriental Spatialism and rose up in the 1960s as a post-war trailblazer of modern art in Taiwan. He joined Ton Fan Group in 1958 and has an enduring passion to explore both traditional and alternative materials with artistic potential, including woodcut, paint, plastic plates, fabric and even cotton swabs. On top of his experiments with media, he simplified his palette to red, black and white, which became established as his trademark technique.

He got off the beaten path and focused on making the most of knife as his tool of creation. In the 1980s, he became well-versed in cutting and collaging to leverage the three-dimensional promise of fabric. Chu built upon Fontana's Spatialism and pioneered its localization by adding to the spatial dimension and incorporating traditional Chinese philosophy. As an icon of Taiwanese modern art, Chu's works were included in retrospective exhibitions of modern art held by National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts and Ixelles Museum in Belgium in recent years. He shot to global fame with his solo exhibitions around the world, including the solos at Stanford University in 1971 and Sejong Center in 2001, Chu Weibor, A Retrospective at Taipei Fine Arts Museum in 2005, and Sunyata at Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts in 2012.

Emptiness and Solidity, Construction on Destruction

Chu has always been pursuing three-dimensional rendering with alternative media backed by oriental philosophy. Finished in 1997, Construction on Destruction presents a self-enclosed realm and marks the culmination of Chu's exploration with the possibilities of space dimension. It follows a minimalist style with white as the base color while delivering an unexpectedly rich texture. Above the white background lies a collage of red, black and white pieces of cloth in a thoughtfully orchestrated ratio. Chu let the fabric crease naturally and added a new layer beneath with slashes at the bottom. He put forward a colorful presentation with a plain palette and expressed philosophical insights with the seemingly unorganized elements. The tri-color threads converge on the bare wooden board at the center, producing a geometric rhythm similar to that of the French abstractionist Georges Mathieu. The cotton threads of different lengths ripped from the cloth collage contain considerable power and constitute an implicit reference to the free-flowing ink strokes in traditional Chinese paintings that reach a perfect equilibrium of emptiness and solidity. He carved on the wooden board and complemented it with red threads alluding to human blood vessels. It helps enrich the underlying message and takes the work to a new level in terms of its philosophical implications.

Chu rises above the superficial physical level and makes something big out of nothing. His works have created an infinite philosophical realm and live up to the reputation as an exemplar of the disruptive break-to-make spirit of modernism.

Price estimate:
HKD: 400,000 – 600,000
USD: 51,600 – 77,400

Auction Result:
HKD: 472,000