Wu Jian’an was born in 1980 in Beijing, China. He is currently a professor and Ph.D. degree tutor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts.
The artistic logic and visual creativity of Wu Jian'an are rooted in his use of scenes that seem distant from contemporary life to express eternal threads that run through the history of human civilization. He awakens the hidden and subtle yet grand and majestic subconscious that lies within every human heart, inspiring the viewer to reflect on human nature and the times in which we live. As Professor Wu Hong from the University of Chicago said, “Wu’s imagination has always operated simultaneously in multiple dimensions. Likewise, his works simultaneously expand the viewer’s artistic imagination in various directions. He travels between words and images while adding a layer of storytelling above figuration and abstraction……He freely traverses temporal divides, instantaneously taking viewers from today’s world back to mysterious primeval times. His art spans various media and styles: painting, sculpture, paper cut, and installation, all of which provide him with a varied vocabulary yet also arouse his desire to cross boundaries – to integrate, transgress and disarrange.”
In 2017, Wu Jian’an represented China in the 57th Venice Biennale. In recent years, Wu’s art works have attended Lines of Thought: Gestural Abstraction in the BAMPFA Collection (Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, USA, 2022), SUPER FUSION: 2021 Chengdu Biennale (Tianfu Art Park, Chengdu, China, 2021), Glasstress: Window to the Future (The State Hermitage Museum, Russia, 2021), KAIWU: Art et design en Chine (Musée de l’Hospice Comtesse, France, 2021), The Endless Life—the Narrative of the Yellow River (The Museum of Contemporary Art Yinchuan, Ningxia, China, 2020), Art and Archaeology (Naples National Archaeological Museum, Italy, 2019), The 7 th Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial (Echigo-Tsumari, Japan, 2018), Serpenti Form (Mori Art Gallery, Tokyo, Japan, 2019; Art Science Museum, Singapore, 2017), etc. He had held several solo exhibitions in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and New York City.
His work has been collected by important institutions including the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archiver (USA), the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University (USA), the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (USA), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (USA), the Museum of Fine Art, Boston (USA), the Oscar Niemeyer Museum (Brazil), the White Rabbit Gallery (Australia), the Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (Japan), the Beijing Minsheng Art Museum (China), the CAFA Art Museum (China), the Start Museum (China), etc. His work is also in the collection of the Modern Media Group, the HSBC Jade center, the Chen Yidan Foundation, Hermès, DIOR and BVLGARI.
Credited for the far-reaching impact of his artistic practice, Wu received The Asian Cul-tural Council 2021 Grants, which made him the only visual artist in China to receive this award that year. In recent years, he has also received 2020 Robb Report Best of the Best Awards for Artist and the 2018 Perspective 40 Under 40 Awards for Artist, and several other art awards bestowed by influential medias and institutes.