Anne Chu at AC Project Room - New York, New York - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Art in America, Feb, 1997 by Gregory Volk

The centerpiece of this exhibition was a suite of six large-scale sculptures of bears. Standing in a row with front paws upturned, they wear expressions so complex and humane as to be almost ridiculously touching. They're made of cast paper (or, in one instance, cast fiberglass), and their chests sport various insignia recalling youth-culture T-shirts: a single all-seeing eye, cartoon figures from a Belgian comic-book series, the Chinese characters for the artist's own name, the remnants of a log fire. Standing self-consciously and ceremoniously, Chu's bears seem fragile, clumsy and awkward, yet at the same time they're full of strange grace -- a bit like ancient animal deities transported into a confusing pop-culture world.

They might just as easily be costumes or props@ the heads are not seamlessly attached to the hollow torsos but rather perch there as separate components. One could interpret these figures, too, as outsized toys, and they seem in addition to reflect the artist's interest in the life-size terra-cotta soldiers excavated from the tomb of the 3rd century B.C. Chinese emperor Qin Shihaungdi. But Chu doesn't pin anything down, preferring to let these multiple resonances accumulate. How she made these works is also important. After they were cast, she added coloration in the form of graphite, ink and pigment which makes it look as if the bears are wearing special raggedy suits, and she ground down parts of the surfaces to tease out the original softness of the paper. Chu's hands-on touches enhance the singularity of each figure.

Also included in this show were three paired casts (in either paper or resin) of a bear's head and a human head, supported on low black tables. Once again it's the expressions that get to you: simultaneously quizzical, intelligent, shy, thoughtful and embarrassed. On the wall, there was a soft-hued watercolor-on-paper study for a bear's head, Untitled (Large Head) which is also pretty wonderful. Chu is onto something here, making complex and allusive work that seems luminously honest.