Annual Exhibition 2020
Ze Yu Wu

“Dance with me” is an oil on wood painting. Abstract forms and shapes are used to evidence emotions and thoughts. It is an abstraction of my imaginary land in which two figures dance through the landscape, dancing together and never apart.
Title: Dance With Me
Media: Oil on Wood
Dimensions: 12 x 12 inches

“Float Through” is an oil painting on canvas that is partially based in still life and is inspired by the daily life surrounding me. Since isolation is the most effective way to control the COVID-19 virus, many of us feel frustrated or out of place because we cannot continue many of our daily activities. We have entered into a period where it feels to me like we are sitting on time, waiting for it to all pass by.  No one knows exactly how long it will take and yet life must go on. Creating a still life of fruit in a bowl filled with water, is a way of portraying myself and my inner health. The water flows from left to right, creating a force that pushes the bowl from one side of the canvas to the other and eventually into space unknown.
Title: Float Through.2020.
Media: Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 24 x 36 inches

“Sun Room” is an oil painting of my imaginary space. This space may be occupied as a site for emotions, a contemplative place to gather one’s thoughts, or just an empty space. With no windows or objects the Sun Room may seem infinite but also could be just a flat surface. There are different interpretive possibilities. To me, the white lines may be lines, or may be reversed to define a negative space.
Title: Sun Room
Media: Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 36 x 24 inches

This is an untitled oil painting featuring a tightly cropped view of a bowl of the ubiquitous Vietnamese soup, pho. I want to call to mind the texture and delicious taste of pho to explore the possibility of connecting an audience to the ideas of home and comfort.
Title: Untitled 
Media: Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 24 x 36 inches

“Peanut” is a ceramic sculpture I made by enlarging a tiny object and replicating its texture using my fingers. The rough handling of the piece suggests the overlooked, in this instance a tiny odd-shaped nut that many of us wouldn’t think twice about. The gesture of creating a huge peanut was meant as a humorous one.
Title: Peanut
Media: Ceramics Clay
Dimensions: 2 x 4 x 9 inches

This is a ceramic sculpture I made of a life size cabbage. It calls to mind the famous Jadeite Cabbage, which is a jadeite carved into a shape of a Chinese cabbage. The Jadeite Cabbage is currently housed in the National Palace Museum in Taipei. Whereas this famous piece is actually tiny, I decided to make a large, rough ceramic cabbage, the opposite of the more famous delicate jade piece. 
Title: Cabbage No.1
Media: Ceramic, Clay
Dimensions: 9.5 x 6 x 3 inches

“Fruit Bowl” is oil on wood with a fresh apple nailed into the painting. The apple nailed on this painting suggests time and its inevitable slide into decay. As time passes, the apple rots day by day and finally shrinks into a dark chunk whereas the painting’s decay is so slow as to be invisible.
Title: Fruit Bowl
Media: Oil on Wood Board 
Dimensions: 12 x 12 inches