Gajah Galley is participating at Art Stage Singapore for the 4th consecutive year. For this installment, the gallery is working with renowned Chinese artist, Gu Wenda (b.1955) who is celebrated for his groundbreaking experimental ink art practice and use of human genetic material. One of the leaders of the '85 Movement in China, in the early to mid 1980s, Gu was already challenging the establishment with a series of provocative ink paintings that employed fake Chinese characters.

Today, Gu's work focuses extensively on ideas of culture and identity: understanding humanity, across ethnic and national boundaries, through the use of language, symbols, as well as hair and other bodily substances. During Art Stage Singapore, the gallery will be presenting one of the artist's newest large-scale installations, The Yanhuang DNA Landscape (2012), that evokes the Chinese landscape tradition but is created using hair-made black ink on green tea paper--uniting themes from Gu's earlier works in an entirely new creative vision.

Gu’s art has been collected by several important public and private collections including the British Museum, Asia Society Museum, Fukuoka Art Museum, The Museum of Modern Art, Ashmolean Museum, just to name a few. In addition to Gu Wenda’s presence at Art Stage, prominent chinese contemporary collector, Mr Uli Sigg, will be giving a talk on Gu Wenda’s works.

Gu’s last major project in Singapore was at the Esplanade during its grand opening in 2002. He created a 7600 x 800 cm installation – a wall of complete national flags of the world made of human hair collected from all over the world.

Image: © Gu Wenda
Metamorphosis, Chinese Series 2 
2000-2005
Human Hair, Glue, Rope 
197 x 122cm