Life & Work with Jiannan Wu

Today we’d like to introduce you to Jiannan Wu.

Hi Jiannan, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I (b.1990) am a China-born, New York-based artist specializing in sculpture. I received my BFA Degree in Sculpture from the China Academy of Art and my MFA Degree in Sculpture from the New York Academy of Art. After graduation, I worked for Jeff Koons for two years while continuing my own creation. In order to devote more time to my own creation, I left Jeff Koons Studio in 2019 and started working full-time as an independent artist. Now I’m an adjunct faculty of the New York Academy of Art, an Elected Member of the American National Sculpture Society, and founder of the Art America China Project.

I’m the recipient of the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation grant, winner of 2017 & 2022 Dexter Jones Awards presented by the American National Sculpture Society,  winner of the Compleat Sculptor Award, and other awards. I was selected as “2022 Top 10 Outstanding Chinese American Youth”&“2020 AACYF Top 30 Under 30” presented by All America Chinese Youth Federation. My work is recognized as The Best Original Sculpture in 2019 by Sculpture Magazine of China. In addition, I was selected for Terra Foundation Residency in Giverny, France 2015, ABC Stone Carrara Merit Award Residency in Italy 2016, West Nottingham Academy Eric Fischl ‘66 Artist-in-Residence 2019, and The Swatch Art Peace Hotel artist residency in Shanghai 2023. My works have also been displayed on numerous exhibitions at renowned venues such as Accesso Gallery in Italy, Gallery Poulsen and Art Herning in Denmark, the Sotheby’s, Art Miami, and Southampton Arts Center in America, Bonner Kunstverein in Germany, Chongqing Contemporary Art Museum and Leo Gallery in China, etc. My works and art achievements have been published in The New York Times, The China Press, Metal Magazine, Beautiful Bizarre Magazine, Hi-Fructose Magazine, Collections Magazine, T(here) Magazine, etc.

I started to draw and paint when I was only four years old. From the age of 13 to 19, I studied in a local art middle school in Dalian, where half of the day’s classes are art courses. During those years, I received a lot of drawing and color training, including figure drawing and still life painting from life, plein air painting, and others. Thousands of drawings of portraits were made during that period. When I went to the China Academy of Art in 2009, I began to get involved in sculpture. In those years, I also did a lot of figure sculpting and drawing from life, mainly studying the structure and anatomy of human bodies and realism techniques. The traditional realistic training in those years has laid a solid foundation for me. The good modeling skills acquired from those training became a handy tool for me, which makes me more at ease in creation.

In the beginning, I didn’t know much about sculpting. Later on, I realized that the action figures and film special effect industries are really booming in the US, so when I graduated from the China Academy of Art in 2014 I decided to come to the US to pursue further education and training in sculpting. The ultimate goal was to enter into the film industry at that time. Serendipitously, during my graduate study at the New York Academy of Art, my sculptures received recognition from the art industry. Then, offers of exhibitions from galleries and interviews from the media followed. It was so natural for me to begin my professional art career as a sculptor after graduation. In retrospect, I didn’t have a strong desire to be an artist since I was a child, and chance played a large part in it.

Currently, I am represented by Gallery Poulsen in Denmark, Leo Gallery in Shanghai, and Soul Art Center in Beijing. I do about 5-6 group exhibitions and one solo exhibition every year. I am very satisfied with my current work status and grateful for everything I have now.

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
No.

The biggest difficulty at the beginning of graduation was the need for a job to maintain the creation because the sales of works were not stable, and the cost of sculpture creation is high. Then when you have a job, you need to balance your work and studio time. This process was hard.

The relationship between business and creation also needs to be balanced. Figure out what you want, and then give yourself a precise position. In recent years, after the impact of the pandemic, the global economy is not good, and the art industry is especially depressed. So there is some impact on exhibitions and sales.

Making art is a process of getting along with oneself most of the time, so artists need to withstand loneliness. Not having set working hours also means not having much time off. I work about 12 hours a day.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Through formats of sculpture and wall-mounted relief, I present the theme of contemporary urban life and social events such as politics and sports with a focus on realism and a playful, satirical, and multifaceted narrative that can make us realize the often absurd nature of the environment we’re currently living in. With the compressed spatial volume and atmospheric, one-point, and two-point perspective, each intricately composed picture tends to be a self-contained scene, like a freeze frame at a certain moment, carrying two layers of meaning of both the event and the image itself.

All my recent works together constitute a theater of the world, spanning from the 1990s to 2020s with locations moving from China, Japan, Afghanistan, France, Germany, the United States to Russia; depicting scenes from stadiums and amusement parks to airports, dining tables with figures such as athletes, politicians, film and television characters, animated characters, and my own family and friends. With a background tone of pessimist and contradiction, this series of figurative works uses visual language such as dynamic composition and most intense colors to contrast the absurdity of reality. These works are the narration and satire of certain social events in the past, in the meanwhile like a mirror, reflecting the portrayal and perception of my own growth experience.

I chose sculpture as my major and medium when I entered the college because of my hobby of collecting action figures and model kits since my childhood, which subtly has also affected the language and appearance of the dimension, material, color, and form of my later sculpture works.

Last week my first public sculpture is installed in the downtown Rutland, Vermont, after three years of waiting (see last photo). The sculpture features Rutland Halloween Parade organizer Tom Fagan, whose connections with comic book artists helped make the parade famous across the country. In the early ‘70s, comic book creators attended the parade and huge parties that followed and incorporated Fagan and the City of Rutland into numerous storylines in more than two dozen comic books. It took me about half a year to go from the sketch design to the model and another few months to convert the model to marble. The sculpture that features Fagan dressed as Batman, who stands face to face with the DC Super Hero is installed on West St, Rutland. I’m honored and proud of this project.

We’d love to hear about any fond memories you have from when you were growing up?
When I was about seven, I often took a double-decker bus with my parents to go to my grandma’s home on weekends. After getting off the bus, I walked among them and held their hands to swing to and fro. The setting sun was ahead of us. I have a tattoo of this scene on my arm. It’s one of my best memories so far.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.jiannanwu.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jiannan_wu/