Christine Wu
"Romancing the Looky-Loos"
October 1 - 31, 2010
Artist Reception: Friday, October 1st
8-11 PM
CONCEPT & STATEMENT:
The title came from a chapter in the book, Air Guitar, by art critic, Dave Hickey. It's about the struggle between how to stay true to yourself as an artist but also keeping the work marketable, while at the same time saying "fuck you" to the market and its trends. As an artist, there's a fine line between being sellable and being a sellout. This conflict of interests make a wonderfully uncomfortable paradox ripe for me to say, just let me do what I do best, which is to create things that are romantic and unsettling at the same time, in hopes to charm the looky loos with how I translate my experiences. This particular body of work is about childhood trauma, and the loss of innocence. Through the game of cowboys and indians, I'm attempting to relate how children get taken advantage of to the cultural history of American Indians and how they were mistreated by the ideals of the American government. The idea of the trauma comes in not only as how kids treat each other on the playground, with bullies and such, but also with more serious issues like molestation, rape and kidnappings and how no one knows how to really deal with those situations regardless of the amount of advice available. I'm using the idea that victims don't know what to do, and the thinking that when push comes the shove, giving in to the push will help avoid the shove, which is rarely the case.
BIO:
Christine Wu is a Los Angeles based artist, illustrator and designer. She was educated at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena where she received her Bachelors in illustration. Her painting "Ghouls Night Out" was featured (and sold) in the Grand Central Art Center exhibition "100 More Artists See Satan," alongside works from Robert Williams, Ron English, and Mark Ryden. She has an almost cubist approach to her paintings, although completely representational, presenting multifaceted subjects.
This is Christine's first feature exhibition.
Click here to access a video preview & studio tour.
Call the gallery director for advance purchase info: (323) 666-7667.