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KARL WEIMING LU
Lives and works in Sydney, Australia
www.kwluart.com
Karl Weiming Lu was a member of the first generation of for further use. That doesn’t seem to work well and the
Chinese artists, after the end of the Cultural Revolution, process seems to degenerate or deteriorate in the way
to seriously begin thinking and experimenting in the visual that we see Lu’s paint dripping down his canvases from
arts. This movement of “85 New Wave Art” is usually cited his arches or spirals or other figures. When we experience
as having begun in some of China’s larger cities around the some motive or emotion or any type of inner process that
year 1985 which lasted a few years till 1989. we find valuable we attempt to make it more concrete
Lu now lives and works in Sydney and he apparently first or we attempt to create a visual representation for the
created his ‘dripping flow’ technique in the 2000s as part experience, but the experience becomes lost and the visual
of a series he did on the theme of memory. For his current markers soon lose any meaning. So I see a bit of process art
amazing show at the Andre Zarre Gallery, his work seems in Lu’s swirls and spirals – we see a beginning and ending
focused on the paradox we live with every day and which of a process but at the same time we see the deterioration
should probably be driving all of us nuts – how could the of the experience as it is attempted to be shifted into a
universe come from nothing or how could there have more usable cognitive form.
always been stuff/energy from which to derive a universe? The paintings also work, however, as an investigation of
As the old rhyme goes: “How could something come from origins and our attempts to capture that which seemingly
nothing? How could something always be? It’s the riddle can’t be captured. In Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, Faustus flat
you can’t answer. It’s the answer you can’t see.” Basically, out asks Mephistophilis how the universe came into being
if we are to trust the human intellect, nothing should exist. and Mephistophilis becomes outraged. Even the chief
To be honest with you though, when I saw Lu’s work at Zarre representative of Satan can’t tell Faustus how the universe
Gallery in New York, I liked it because it seemed to employ came into being. Lu’s abstract images and his technique
the perfect technique to capture the central problem of in creating these images seem to capture our constant
memory for me. Memorizing stuff that we see or sense attempts and constant failures to crack the one nut that
is fine. Memorizing information is fine. The real problem seems impossible to crack.
happens when we have meaningful or transformative ( “Karl Weiming Lu – Recent Paintings – Andre Zarre Gallery”,
experience in our inner reality and try to capture that New York, 05/27/2015, by Arte Fuse Guest Writer Daniel Gauss )
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