‘TREASURES’
One artwork, “Prosperous Descendants,” commands the room. A 22-pound, 8-foot-tall tree draws the eye toward the farthest display case. Wu’s sculpted melon vines are ripe with insect and plant life in thin, stretched gold; its bamboo scaffolding was made from bronze.
“This would’ve taken someone 10 years to make,” Van Tuerenhout says. The museum’s installation team carefully unfolds and assembles each branch like a Christmas tree. “The workmanship is incredible. As you start looking at it, you see all kinds of animals walking around on the branches. These gentlemen have spent their lifetimes observing nature, plant and animal life. Rendering that knowledge, there’s four to five decades translated into artwork.”
But, back to Waldo.
Similar to the popular children’s puzzle-book series, which depicts dozens or more characters in action at various locations, intricate busyness is the essence of Wu’s gold artworks. His subjects of choice? Insects, plants, amphibians and the occasional crustacean.
In a big-picture sense, Wu’s focus is organic life cycle. On a minuscule scale, his specialty is the ant.
“Reminiscences of Rustic Pleasures,” a 4-foot sculpture in pure gold, silver and bronze, features more than 500 ants, mantises, swallowtail butterflies, dragonflies and cicadas. The detailed ant colony took three years to complete. Worker ants guard their queen while others parent, forage, build and transport.
“It’s different from our society where we value individualism,” Van Tuerenhout says. “The group can do a lot more than an individual can. The ants will achieve a whole lot more in terms of food and protecting each other.”
Wu, the son of farmers, grew up in the countryside. Much of his childhood was spent running barefoot through rice paddies, observing plants, animals and insects in their natural habitats. Early in his career, Wu spent seven years carving 25 wooden ant sculptures before later switching to gold, a more malleable substance.
“Gold, like jade, is going to outlast other materials,” Van Tuerenhout says. “It’s not going to rust or grow mold or decay. Gold is forever and leaves a lasting legacy.”
Gold may last forever, but life does not. Wu’s fascination with birth, death and vitality surfaces in several pieces.
With “Zen,” a gold cicada affixed on a silver sphere, the artist uses a homophonic pun — both “cicada” and “Zen” are pronounced “chan” in Mandarin Chinese — to examine whether the insect is leaving this world or entering it. The distinction between the word and life stage is blurred.
From “Mundane Affinity,” a petrified, 10,000-year-old skull, morning glory blossoms emerge. In “I Need Soil,” a small tree breaks through a bottle, symbolizing human pollution.
Life, though not eternal, finds a way.
In his artist statement, Huang shares that creation is a process of self-recognition and self-interpretation, an avenue for selffulfillment and self-transcendence.
“When you look at something like ‘Heart Gate’ you think, ‘How did he make this? This was all one rock, a big boulder,’ ” Van Tuerenhout muses of Huang’s dueling, 2-foot sculptures carved from Nephrite jade and connected by chain link. “Talk about talent. Every single link was carved to become a chain, but you have to be careful. It says, ‘Look what I can do.’ ”
Like Wu’s work, Huang’s is inspired by nature. Flowers, birds and insects are meticulously realized through jade-sculpting techniques that originated in the eighth century. It’s a time-honored tradition, albeit one Huang has innovated for future generations.
Short poems accompany each of his 27 pieces. The rest is open to interpretation.
“The plasticity and inflexibility of jade. The possibilities and impossibilities of desire,” the artist wrote for “Follow your heart,” a broken piece of jade constricted by rope.
In “Rescued From Desperation,” green shoots push through a brick. “The brick is slowly being rendered back to the components it was made out of, so it becomes dust eventually. Other plants will take its place.”
The idea for “Treasures in Gold & Jade” originated in April 2019, when Peter C. Keller, president of Bowers Museum in Santa Ana, Calif., developed the exhibition with Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture. Wu and Huang proved an obvious and natural fit. They share an ability to produce unimaginably delicate works from two of Earth’s most beautiful and challenging substances.
“When it comes to jade, the artist is carving away, removing to release the inner image they have in their mind. If they do it wrong, then ‘Boom!,’ ” Van Tuerenhout says. “I’m sure they both learned the hard way. At least with gold you can melt it and start over.”