"Jiannan's work is concerned with the tension between the public world and private life and the dissonance between spectator and spectacle. Themes of failure, desire and fate are wonderful touches to artworks that could choose to be satirical low-blows, but instead Jinnan invites the viewer to see images of politicians and medical masks (images that many are surely sick of by now) with a renewed empathy and cultural lens."
"The artist builds scenes that are primarily figurative sculpture and wall-mounted bas-relief, which end up feeling like "compressed stage sets", relying on cinematographic techniques such as shallow space, forced perspective and theatrical lighting to pull everyday moments into a realm of kooky dreams. The characters of the public world: politicians, footballers, the military, all juxtapose, whilst sharing dense compositions, with autobiographical scenes of the common private world: family dinners, domestic affairs, men asleep on sofas."
Jiannan Wu lives and works between Dalian, China and New York, teaching at the New York Academy of Art. He creates otherworldly sculptures and wall-mounted bas-reliefs that inhabit a limbo between places and realities. His work probes tensions between public and private life and the dissonance between spectator and spectacle, invoking themes of failure, desire and fate. He reframes familiar political and pandemic imagery with renewed empathy and cultural perspective. He heightens pop-culture kitsch to craft bizarro fairytales from collective memories. He composes compressed stage-like scenes that use shallow space, forced perspective and theatrical lighting to transform quotidian moments.
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