Wenjue Lu & Chufeng Fang
[New York, United States]
Art Yourself Atelier is honored to present "The Euclideans," a daring online exhibition that brings to the fore the artistic ingenuity of the New York-based artist duo, Wenjue Lu and Chufeng Fang. This exhibition is a bold critique and a vibrant response to the stringent norms of Chinese art education, manifesting through the delicate interplay of soft sculptures and evocative poetry. Journey with us into a space where art transcends boundaries, embodying a defiant spirit that seeks to challenge and reshape conventional narratives. Witness a transformative exploration of form and expression, where the Euclidean meets the non-Euclidean, offering a fresh lens to perceive the world anew.
Artist's Biography
Using soft sculptures, fiber art in conjunction with poetry, Wenjue Lu and Chufeng Fang
are an artist duo seeking to provoke through the disguised plainness of natural-colored fibers.
Born in Beijing and Jieyang, China respectfully, Wenjue obtained her B.F.A. in fashion design at
Parsons School of Design while Chufeng obtained his B.A. in media and culture at NYU. They
began working together since 2021 under the name Studio Wenjüe Lu exploring the
relationship between stillness, fragility, anxiety, and slowness in an ever-accelerating world.
"The works produced through our bodies are a result of letting go. We’re repelled by a
vision: A giant, constantly spinning wheel that we called world, fueled by lives strolling through
a linear production of history, obsessed with acceleration and accumulation. Kaleidoscopic
madnesses. As two human beings, like everyone else, we are inevitably governed by this
unbearable thing called ego, so unbearable it dissolves all the desire for us to work as one
entity, but to work as none: the bodies as the vehicle and minds as the filter, we lend ourselves
to poetry and dreamscapes, we work to carve out a space of Tao, where “Heaven’s Will and
Human Affairs Are One”(天人合一). This alternative world, in which human is no longer at the
center, also possess the mundane, the fragmentary, and a newfound slowness."
-- Wenjue Lu & Chufeng Fang
About the Solo Exhibition
The Euclideans is a series of soft sculptures and a reaction to the sadistically rigid Chinese art education system under an institution that deems art as merely one of the tools for propaganda and political control. Lopsidedly leaning toward the technical aspect in an academic art setting, the system promotes streamlining artisans rather than offering space for critical thinking. A prominent practice for students is sketching out highly geometric plaster casts under standardized criteria, again and again, years after years. It is within this paradoxical environment that "The Euclideans" find their genesis. Adopting the concept of Euclidean geometry, the study of plane and solid figures on the basis of axioms and theorems employed by the Greek mathematician Euclid (c. 300 BCE). Whenever a figure ceases to be flat, it becomes non-Euclidean by definition. The Euclideans serve as an outcry against China’s dismissiveness towards art and its education, against the regime’s fear towards freedom of expression, highlighting the complexities of navigating within a framework that seeks to streamline artistic sensibilities. These sculptures challenge the very system that hinders the Chinese population from critical artistic expression, a living mockery of Chinese art education itself within the interplay of the concept of hardness and softness. In this way, the Euclideans are inherently non-Euclidean beings, and they seek to escape a flatten worldview twice, once when they chose not to be flat, another when they chose to grow out limbs.
Their Study Experience
Wenjue Lu
2020 Fashion Design - Parsons School of Design, New York, NY, United States
Chufeng Fang
2022 Media, Culture, and Communication - New York University, New York, NY United States
Their Art Exhibition Experience (SELECTED)
2023 · New York, United States
Stilllife Art & Design Fair 2023
2023 · New York, United States
Alternate Side Parking. Group Show, Starta Arta Gallery
2022 · New York, United States
Selected Poetic Transfiguration. Solo, LATITUDE Gallery/Shihui Zhou
2022 · Los Angeles, United States
/Untitled/ & /Aftermath/. Duo Exhibition with Jiawei Fu, Beyoslf Gallery
Their Lectures and Teaching Experience
2022 · Brooklyn, NY, United States
"Learning Sashiko." Textiles and Social Activism Class. Pratt Institute of Art, Guest Lecture.
2022 · New York, NY, United States
"On Soft Sculptures." Soft Structures Class. Parsons School of Design, Guest Lecture.
Their Commissions (SELECTED)
2022 · New York, NY, United States
The Canvas Global, Window Installation(Sculpture) at The Canvas Oculus Center
2022 · Brooklyn, NY, United States
Peace & Bonfire LLC, Installation(Sculpture) at Berry Street Community Garden
2022 · Queens, NY, United States
Peace & Bonfire LLC, Stage Installation(Sculpture) at Peace & Bonfire 2022
Their Bibliography and Media
Zee, Michaela. “WENJUE LU & MICHAEL FANG”. PERSUASIAN 001 Published June 2022: Online.
Santos, Karen. “Meet Wenjüe Lu’s Slow Poems”. WE THE COOL Magazine Issue 11: Online.