500 Brushstrokes #10

Viewed from a distance, Wu Jian’an’s 500 Brushstrokes, #10 appears to be a riot of gestural ink brushstrokes spread across a massive rectangle of absorbent Xuan paper—the work of an artist possessed by urgent forces of expression that poured forth without restraint. Upon closer examination, the work’s deliberate, even painstaking, composite nature becomes apparent. Each of the dynamic brushstrokes has been carefully cut out of its original context and collaged into the larger whole using traditional Chinese conservation techniques, which allow for nearly seamless layering of paper on paper. In scale and aesthetic, the resulting work evokes the passion and gestalt of postwar American action painting, but its material orientation reveals a more nuanced and layered understanding of abstraction. Wu’s work invites us to question inherited assumptions about the meaning and mechanics of large-scale gestural abstraction, which are so heavily textured by the lionizing stories of Pollock, Kline, and others of their generation. Far from the urgent outpouring of emotion that it seems at first, 500 Brushstrokes is a celebration of deliberation, craftsmanship, material, and conservation technique. In this way, Wu has incorporated not only postwar American abstraction, but also premodern Chinese painting and conservation to the layered portfolio of inspirations that have led to this highly original artwork.