Wooden sculpture

43 x 39 x 20 cm.16 7/8 x 15 3/8 x 7 7/8 in.

Signed in Chinese and dated on the lower back
LITERATURE Guangxi Fine Arts Publishing House, China, Juming Taichi Sculpture, March 2006, p.50.
PROVENANCE Private Collection, Asia.

Ju Ming
(b.1938-)
Ju Ming is a 20th century Taiwan art master renowned internationally, and also is one of the most important Chinese sculptors. He spends his life energy into the exploration of sculpture, from figurative realistic folk sculptures with local characteristics in his early years, gradually developed into modern sculpture full of freehand spirit, then evolved as performance close to abstract, he never stops his pace of exploration, so he has owned an extremely high achievement in the pioneering of Chinese sculpture field. Reviewing Ju Ming’s art creation history from the perspective of subject matter, his development of sculpture art can be divided into three stages, namely, the “Native Series” expressing “buffalo”, “Confucius” or folk religious subjects, the “Taichi Series” of imagery sculptures “pondering meaning of life, embracing nature”, and the “Living World Series” expressing art with a variety of materials, among them, what really allowed Ju Ming step into the world art scene and won widespread praise is still the “Taichi Series” he pioneered in 1976. In the “Taichi Series”, Ju Ming successfully condensed the profound oriental philosophy into a formal language not only embodying oriental charm and also having Western abstract styling, thereby created a sculpture style with both deep oriental cultural connotation and unique personality appearance.

Bidding farewell to his “Native Series”, in 1976 Ju Ming completed the first batch of “Taichi Series” having most originality with his explosive creative energy, during this time each of his works of Taichi Series was named with a kind of Chinese “Kung Fu”, and is a small-scale wooden carving work, symbolizing the original conception and the most primitive aura of “Taichi Series”; just as what expressed by this auction item “Taichi: Kicking”, each of these works has not yet displayed the block structure and square rhombic cutting angle of Taichi Series, however, it has had the spiritual charm of a Taichi warrior, and this abstract structure also comes with an organic life form and is full of natural and primitive power. In 1977, this batch of works once exhibited in Ju Ming’s first Japan solo exhibition held in Tokyo Central Art Museum, caused a great response at the time, and both “Asahi Shimbun” and “Sankei Shimbun” rarely published the photos and profiles of Ju Ming’s works in a larger space. The English fine art magazine “Orientations” even published a special article report about Ju Ming, and had such mead: “... some experts believe that Ju Ming is the best Chinese woodcarving artist since Yuan Dynasty.”

The success of “Taichi Series” comes from the artist’s high appreciation of sculptural materials and bold development of artistic techniques. In this piece of work “Taichi: Side kick”, Ju Ming prominently emphasized the texture and fine changes of wood, becoming the main features of initial “Taichi Series”. This work draws on the movement changes of wood texture to express the dynamics of Taichi moves, so it not only plays the quality of medium material itself, but also demonstrates the dynamics and the speed of Taichi, making the flow of each piece of texture follow the requirements of inherent vitality and dynamism of the work and showing the most reasonable and natural rhythmic movement of the entire shape. The styling of the work “Taichi: Side kick” presents a cross shape, his right leg haughtily raises, left leg firmly and proudly independently stands, arms spread out widely, and head flexibly rotates, as if penetrating with readily built momentum in a statically setting posture, revealing both steadiness and dynamics, and displaying dynamic sense amid weight sense. The Director of Tokyo National Kyoto Art Museum, Hebei Michiaki once said: “Ju Ming (works) has weight sense, this is the same as Japan’s modern sculptors; and Ju Ming (works) has dynamic sense, this is also the same as Japan’s modern sculptors, but none of Japan’s sculptors likes Ju Ming in holding both of these two characteristics.” Expressing both weight sense and dynamic sense in sculpture styling and knife techniques is exactly the central aim of Ju Ming’s “Taichi Series”, is his most unique artistic vocabulary, and also is the fundamental law used in his following three decades of creation. Thus, it also underscores the pioneering and establishing significance of woodcarving works in Ju Ming’s entire creative history, and thus further sets up foundation and cultures potential for subsequent creations of “Taichi Series”, and is a rare fine work can not missed by a systematic collector of Ju Ming’s works.

Price estimate:
HKD：600,000 - 800,000
USD：77,400 - 103,200

Auction Result:
HKD: --