That ability to capture the everyday and make it accessible has helped turn Ju into one of Asia’s best-known sculptors. Over the next six months, millions of people will see 72 of his works at the Singapore Art Museum (through Sept. 19) and at indoor public spaces around the city-state (through the end of the year) before the exhibition moves to Beijing and Shanghai in 2005. Ju’s semiabstract works, with their emphasis on organic representation, have prompted comparisons to Western sculptors like Rodin and Henry Moore. Indeed, he seems to be blurring the lines between East and West, maneuvering between the conventions of traditional sculpture, which favors realism, and the current Chinese avant-garde, which tends to focus on conceptual art. “While the Chinese avant-garde movement is closely connected to China’s social and political climate, Ju Ming does not adopt such an agenda,” says exhibition curator Joyce Fan. “Rather, he offers the audience a slice of life that they can relate to.”
Born in 1938, the last of 11 children in a poor family, Ju started his career as the apprentice to a Buddhist statuary craftsman. He set up a workshop and produced religious and mythological figurines but still longed to become an artist. When he was 30, he persuaded Taiwan’s leading modern sculptor, the Western-educated Yuyu Yang (1926-97), to accept him as a student. Under his tutelage, Ju learned the new techniques being employed in contemporary art. Still, he considers both parts of this education vital to his development. “The Chinese traditional way alone would be too conservative, but the Western style alone would be lacking in tradition,” he says through a translator.
Ju first won international notice in the late 1970s with his acclaimed “Taichi Series,” consisting of large, angular bronze giants frozen in tai chi exercise poses. “Tai chi has an international language which people understand and appreciate,” he says. Unveiling the latest and final part of the series, “Taichi Arches,” in Singapore last week, Ju reflected on how the works have evolved over the past 30 years. The early works, he says, are of solitary figures, because he practiced the highly spiritual Chinese art alone at first. But as he grew more experienced he practiced with a partner, as demonstrated by the newest sculptures of two figures “pushing hands.”
Ju works mainly with a chainsaw and hacksaw on Styrofoam, creating strong, energetic lines for the sculptures. The foam is then used to cast the final work in bronze. His technique has been described as “fast and furious,” but when asked how long it takes him to sculpt a piece, Ju quips, “Fifty years and a few minutes.”
Twenty of the pieces in the “Taichi Series” are on display at the Singapore Art Museum, alongside sculptures from his “Living World Series”–tongue-in-cheek interpretations of people’s quirks and mannerisms. They include six new figures in various poses of meditation or showing compassion; entitled “Monk,” the group was inspired by the selfless Singapore monk the Venerable Ming Yi. Ju also has three large “Taichi Arches” displayed on Orchard Road, Singapore’s main shopping street. And “Gentlemen”–with their gray suits, briefcases and self-absorption–are displayed before the Fullerton Hotel, in the heart of the business district, interacting perfectly with the environment. “What is most interesting with Ju Ming is his background: he comes from a craft background, a folk- and religious-art tradition, as opposed to an art-school education,” says Kwok Kian Chow, director of the Singapore Art Museum. “This artist has reached his own expression without going through the whole syllabus from early constructivism through minimalism to modernism.”
Some believe Ju exemplifies a new breed of Asian artists, who start off as craftsmen but parlay their trade–be it woodcarving, leatherwork or textiles–into fine arts, as many Italian crafts workers did with fashion or furniture design. “Ju Ming is now the leading sculptor in Asia, not only by his current market value but also for his artistic talent,” says Vinci Chang, a specialist in 20th-century Chinese art at Christie’s auction house. (A small Ju piece recently sold for about $180,000 at auction in Hong Kong.) “His sculpture is definitely a new breakthrough for Chinese contemporary art.”
Oxford University art historian Michael Sullivan points out that, except perhaps in Ju’s “Parachute” series, the artist has appeared less concerned with stretching the limits of sculpture than with using his craft to represent the world around him. Still, says Kwok, the rest of the world may not be ready to embrace an artist like Ju. “A lot of international curators and critics are currently interested in art that is conceptual, and that also deals with political and social aspects of Asia,” she says. “So I suspect it will take a little bit of time for the more philosophical Asian esthetic to be considered.” A walk around Singapore would surely help.
