Gu Wenda 谷文達 (b. 1955)

Gu moved to New York in 1987 and has one of the highest profiles among artists in the Chinese diaspora. He graduated from the Shanghai School of Arts, got his MFA from the China Academy of Art and studied under the classical landscape master Lu Yanshao (1909-1993). By the mid-1980s, armed with technical skills, he subverted classical ink art as one of the leading figures of the New Wave art movement.

Since then he has been investing in the nature of art and language. He is also known for installations, body art and the use of unusual materials like human hair, blood, semen or sanitary towels. From 1993-to 2004 he installed 21 projects for the United Nations in various countries using human hair and his famed cryptic calligraphy.

Gu is credited with the use of unreadable characters to investigate the power of the written word. In many works, such as the one we own, he places these pseudo characters in surreal spaces.