Wed-Thu: 11AM-5PM | Fri-Sat: by advance appointment
Wed-Thu: 11AM-5PM | Fri-Sat: by advance appointment

Lida Wu

Nominated by The University of Chicago  Lida Wu is a painter, critic and translator, who’s work is influenced by the relationship between the verbal and visual arts. There is no way to create paintings today without addressing the state of painting itself. A painting is color, form, blobs of oil on a stiffened piece of cloth. It is both an unpenetrable surface that wants to be touched and a portal inviting entrance. This space is exactly where it is, and yet it’s merely an optical construct. The work is apolitical, at times anachronistic, but never ahistorical. Wu explores the tension between traditional landscape and abstraction,addressing the subjectivity of perception, the impossibility of answering “yes” or “no.” The images create space and depth through color and form, evoking a specific place, although not one that is ever real. Maybe this image operates with its own set of spatial and material constructs, or maybe it is a Cartesian world with recognizable perspective. Lida Wu is a recent graduate of the University of Chicago. Image: Edelweiss, 12" x 16", Oil on Canvas, 2013. 

LAUNCH Invitational

2014 - 2015,
Artist Resident