. anne chu



Anne Chu
New Work
February 22 - March 30, 2002

On February 22, an installation of new work by Anne Chu will open at the Christine Burgin Gallery. The installation will include new sculptural works and a suite of monotypes.

For this exhibition, Chu continues to investigate and to draw inspiration from medieval culture. Stories of the Crusades; tomb carvings of knights and their ladies; arms and armor; tapestries and architectural friezes; banners and the iconography of heraldic imagery all play a part in this new work. As in an earlier body of work based on figure types found in the funerary sculpture of the Tang Dynasty, in this new work Chu is drawn to figurative archetypes and archetypal modes of representation. It is appropriate that Chu has chosen this medieval period and the chivalric tradition in particular as a starting point for this new body of work. Known for such allegorical literature such as the Roman de la Rose, the medieval period is one in which objects -- the rose, the tower, the maiden and, most often, the knight -- frequently exist as idealized versions of the original, players in an allegorical tale open for interpretations variously military, religious or romantic. Chu uses the sculptural forms, which she draws from this period in much the way in which they were conceived, as idealized forms open to artistic interpretation.

The installation will include three large banners made of a variety of materials not often used in a sculptural way: fabric woven like chain mail; carved painted and flocked wood, bear claws, knitting and silks the color of metal. The suite of monotypes are designed to be installed high on the gallery walls in approximation of an architectural frieze. They represent a series of reclining figures that, lying head to toe, create a landscape. Realized in broad lyrical strokes, these figurative landscapes are rendered more abstract than representational. The monotypes were printed by Maurice Sanchez of Derriere L'Etoile in New York and are co-published by Julie Sylvester and Christine Burgin.

Ann Chu's work has been exhibited most recently in one-person exhibitions at the Victoria Miro Gallery in London, the Donald Young Gallery in Chicago and at the Berkeley Art Museum, the Indianapolis Museum of Art and the Dallas Museum of Art. She is the recipient of the 2001 Penny McCall award and has been awarded grants from the Anonymous Was a Woman Foundation and the Joan Mitchell Foundation.

anne chu

Anne Chu
New Work, 2002
Installation view Christine Burgin, New York