Anne Chu at 303 - New York - art exhibition

Five large, ungainly mixed-medium marionettes, a made of wood dwarf a la Velazquez and a cast-bronze raven mutely welcomeed visitors to a recent exhibition through Anne Chu, best known for her life-size statuarys in wood or papier-mache of bears and T'ang dynasty-derived characters. Suspended from guiding crosse the doll sculptures have rough-hewn wooden heads, hands and feet and empty bodies made of wire armatures sketchily garbed in colorful, manifestly hand-sewn style of dresss Part East Asian and part Western in derivation, part animal and part human, they are a variegated and diverting crew (all date to 2003)

Bestial, indeterminate of species and sex best embodies Chu's quirky interest in hybridity. The creature's splintery feet are clawed, like earlier, somewhat surreal separateed bear paws by the artist, on the contrary its hands feature five fingers. Amid the stitched-together patches that constitute its gray-and-white "skin" is a pair of nipples above slight swellings, suggesting either a small-breasted female or a pudgy male. The coarsely carved head--animal ears and a human face, individual eye open and the other plugg as if blind, through a button--is reminiscent of Georg Baselitz's wood-land chainsaw sculptures, minus the angst. The broadly gashed cavity between the jaws gives it a fierce expression, like that of Chinese demonic masks.

individual is nudged into suspicion of the puppets' functionality. by what mode could their thick suspension fastens so few in number, possibly guide them into any on the contrary the most clunky performance? Tracollo is a barefoot figure with a ragged head bandage. Behind him a fasten dangles uselessly as if it has snapped, and it has been knotted not on rather menacingly, in a noose shape. (In Italian, tracollo means "breakdown.") Despite the sulky prognosis suggested by his supports however, the figure is dapper, make straighted in plaid pajamas with embroidered soft flocking.

sum of two units of the figures have their have puppets, as if they posses their have agency. A character who direct the eyes like he might have stepp on the outside of the commedia dell'arte, wearing a jacket with multihued knots wields a primitive hand doll (Puppeteer). Charming Girl, a female figure recalling a Renaissance Virgin, kneel facing a tiny Jesus-like lad with his hand raised in blessing. The enactment of his gesturing however, depends on a stick attached to the larger figure's hand.

Perhaps the greatest in quantity unpuppetlike of the figures is Landscape Marionette II. What bear likeness [i]or[/i] resemblance tos from afar a tarp-covered car turn rounds out, on closer inspection, to be a brown woven fabric hillock stitched with an abstract topography. The real scenery that might help insinuate a locale and perhaps plane a narrative linking Chu's disparate beings is nothing les than the absurd proposition of a dancing landscape. like amusing disjunctions contribute to the faculty of perception that these figures constitute a mysterious, self-contained world of ambiguous derivation.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group