CD Wu

Region: MFA Annual

Website: http://www.cd-wu.com

City / State: Brooklyn, NY

My practice combines minimal pencil drawings of simplified, whimsical forms with large-scale canvases and idiosyncratic neon sculpture. I start by bending and shaping the neon tubes that will later inform the graphite images. The paintings, then, play with an understanding of “light” in representational painting by the literal presence of a light-emitting element. The “light” in the paintings operates, at once, as representational form (tree, cloud, goldfish, flower), line, color, light source, and as a commentary on the relationship among all four. In the Duchampian tradition, I present a series of quotidian signifying forms (such as children’s drawings) and, through changes in their context, size, scale, and material, make the viewer read them as something other than what they usually are. By bringing intensive fabrication processes to materials that are sacred to conceptual art, my work amplifies yet defamiliarizes the everyday while drawing attention to the space and conventions of viewing that inform our experience and understanding of art.