Wu Jian'an--RROJECTS

“Wu Jian’an: Blue Tiger” Exhibition View ©️ Photography, Music, Editing: Jia Yan Zheng, Photography Assistant: Song Mo

Wu Jian’an: Blue Tiger

If the perfectly round blue stones in Jorge Luis Borges’s writing represent a point in space that encompasses everything—hovering between the real and the imagined, the knowable and the unknowable—then Wu Jian’an’s latest solo exhibition, Blue Tiger, currently on view at Beijing Pianfeng Gallery, functions like a similarly intricate bridge. It traverses the contemporary and the ancient, the natural and the supernatural, poetry and dream, instantly guiding viewers into a mysterious passage that connects to another world.

Titled Blue Tiger, the exhibition draws inspiration from Borges’s short story of the same name. In the tale, the protagonist searches for the legendary “blue tiger” in the Ganges Delta. A small handful of perfectly round blue stones, resembling full moons and gathered from the sand, defies counting, driving him to the brink of despair. When the “divine” finally appears and takes the stones away, a reality that can be measured by numbers re-emerges—remaining, along with day and night, wisdom, habits, and the world itself, at the protagonist’s side.

“Wu Jian’an: Blue Tiger” Exhibition View, PIFO Gallery, 2024

Wu Jian’an’s artistic practice has consistently been driven by the exploration and expression of mystical themes. Through his distinctive, interdisciplinary approach—integrating diverse materials, media, and modes of expression—he weaves rich narrative landscapes that rely on visual perception while opening pathways to imagination and revelation.

This exhibition is organized into six spatially and conceptually distinct zones, bringing together new works from the Invisible Faces glass sculpture series, the artist’s latest pieces from his iconic Incarnation series, and multiple large-scale installations made with materials such as pulp, limestone, and plaster. Together, these works create a “holographic” environment in which viewers can experience the core of Wu Jian’an’s artistic inquiry and visual creativity as a dynamic, topological field of energy. Within this space, his series of new works are interspersed like constellations; myths, classical texts, heroes, monsters, reproduction, extinction, temporal cycles, and eternity continually unfold and recombine, generating endless and infinite possibilities…

“On the chaotic ocean lies the Instant Valley; at the bottom of the Instant Valley stands a Nameless Mountain; upon the Nameless Mountain rests an Unnamed Island.

From the Unnamed Island flows the parting waters, from the parting waters emerge the wondrous stones.

The stones give rise to trees, shrouded in dense mist; the stones have holes, each as large as a horse’s eye.

Enter the holes and walk five li, and you will encounter the boundary marker of ten li, at the base of which is inscribed in bold characters: Blue Tiger.”

— Wu Jian’an

Invisible Sculptures series, plaster, dimensions variable, 2024©Wu Jian’an, 2024

As described in the story, the Blue Tiger is invisible, yet tangibly grasped in the hand. In the gallery’s entrance, a long corridor displays a series of Invisible Sculptures in varied forms, evoking the uncanny grandeur of naturally sculpted rocks and mountains. The surfaces are marked by mottled undulations and grooves, the result of painstaking manual layering, gripping, and shaping of plaster.

In the second gallery space, the wall-mounted work Touching the Cave Through Pulp is created with handmade Guizhou paper pulp, repeatedly printed from the surfaces of natural caves formed over tens of thousands of years.

These first two spaces convey a striking sense of “materiality”: through time and handcraft, the materials themselves assume extraordinary forms within the space. Like naturally shaped stones in a mountain, they acquire a spiritual resonance through the viewer’s imagination, opening a perceptual field that is at once familiar and unfamiliar—a chaotic realm bridging the tangible and the imagined.

Invisible Sculptures and Touching the Cave Through Pulp (local) ©Wu Jian’an

“Once upon a time, there was a blue tiger, and on its back grew a mountain.

Once upon a time, there was a blue tiger, and on its back grew an ancient tree.

Once upon a time, there was a blue tiger, and on its back lay a stone.

On the stone sat a bird’s nest, and inside the nest were two eggs.

Within the egg marked with green speckles lived another blue tiger.”

—Wu Jian’an

“Wu Jian’an: Blue Tiger” Exhibition View, PIFO Gallery, 2024

In the main gallery, a towering maze draws visitors into its depths. At the heart of this labyrinth are the glass works from the Invisible Faces series, completed in the summer of 2024 by the artist at Berengo Studio on Murano Island, Venice. Each piece depicts a face, with a smaller face nested inside a larger one, creating an internal-external layered structure. The inner face features a polished silver mirror surface, while the outer layer is transparent. This interplay between inner and outer surfaces generates complex reflections, and as light and viewing angles shift, the works reveal unique visual effects—evoking visitors from another planet or deities of extraordinary power from legend.

Blue Tiger, glass, colored glass, silver, H 38 × L 34 × P 34 cm (outer layer), H 28 × L 14 × P 12 cm (inner layer), 2024©Wu Jian’an

Corn Corn, glass, colored glass, silver, H 53 × L 24 × P 24 cm (outer layer), H 30 × L 16 × P 15 cm (inner layer), 2024©Wu Jian’an

Three Eyes and One Mouth, glass, colored glass, silver, H 40 × L 33 × P 32 cm (outer layer), H 17 × L 12.5 × P 14 cm (inner layer), 2024©Wu Jian’an

Glove Bigger Than Hand, glass, colored glass, silver, H 47 × L 38 × P 40 cm (outer layer), H 28 × L 16 × P 8 cm (inner layer), 2024©Wu Jian’an

When working with glass—a material at once familiar and endlessly astonishing—the idea of “catching the moment” becomes a tacit understanding between the artist and the master glassmakers. That fleeting flash of inspiration, along with the rolling heat radiating from the furnace, is captured and fixed in time. When viewers find themselves wandering through the continuously shifting, labyrinthine space, repeatedly losing and finding their way, what they encounter in that rare, tranquil moment before these glass faces—is it the force of impermanence and creation, or a deeper glimpse into the many facets of themselves?

Red Zorro Mask (local), glass, colored glass, silver, H44 × L48 × P39 cm (outer layer), H29.5 × L11 × P13 cm (inner layer), 2024©Wu Jian’an

Sun (local), glass, colored glass, silver, H43.5 × L35 × P41 cm (outer layer), H29.5 × DIAM.12.5 cm (inner layer), 2024©Wu Jian’an

Starlight Is the Children of Stars, My Face Is Their Playground (local), glass, colored glass, silver, H36 × L33 × P38 cm (outer layer), H19 × L12.5 × P12.5 cm (inner layer), 2024©Wu Jian’an

“The Blue Tiger was never found, yet the legend of the Blue Tiger, diffused throughout the valleys and forests, wrapped around the gentleman like a mist,

ultimately leading him into a baffling predicament—

perhaps ‘predicament’ is not quite right; it should be called an entrance to the supernatural world.

There, the gentleman revealed his attachment to the human world and his immense fear of the unknown, praying and calling for humanity’s guardians.

At last, with the aid of the ‘divine,’ he was able to turn back and return to the human world.

This bizarre and surreal adventure gave rise to a peculiar literary concept:

the Blue Tiger—a threshold connecting to an uncontrollable world.”

—Wu Jian’an

“Wu Jian’an: Blue Tiger” Exhibition View, PIFO Gallery, 2024

Drawing aside the crimson-lit drapery, the artist’s “Avatars” series emerges under the theme Heavenly Motion—Running Through the Four Seasons, representing the largest and most complex works within this series. From classical texts and heroic myths to the ever-shifting forces of nature across the seasons and the fearless drive to move forward, Wu Jian’an consistently channels innovation in visual expression as his creative engine. While preserving the striking visual intensity and allure of the works, he steadfastly conveys and constructs his unique worldview, continuing his relentless exploration of the relationship between the individual and the collective.

“Wu Jian’an: Blue Tiger” Exhibition View, PIFO Gallery, 2024

Although the creation of these works resembles the construction of a precise instrument—thousands of tiny individual motifs are meticulously colored, carved, dyed, waxed, and stitched with cotton thread in highly controlled steps—the overall composition appears remarkably alive, as if freed from strict rationality. A subtle balance emerges between control and chaos: the image as a whole seems not entirely preordained, but rather the result of each element growing and evolving organically, radiating a vibrant energy of form and color.

Tian Xingjian – Running Through the Seasons: Summer (local), engraved on watercolor paper, watercolor, acrylic, soaked in beeswax, cotton thread stitched and mounted on silk, 190 × 280 cm, 2024©Wu Jian’an

Fishermen along the Yellow Sea tell a story of a boat spirit, saying that wooden boats know the span of their own life. On those pitch-black nights, when a wooden boat drifts across the calm sea, the fishermen may suddenly see a large, tiger-like blue creature standing or lying on the gunwale, glimmering with light.

Those who witness this sight must quickly find a way to escape, for the boat is about to sink. The blue tiger appears as a farewell from the boat to the fishermen.

In New York, there is a man of unusual appearance, whose private ghostly admirers number over a million. His right pupil protrudes more than three inches, the eyelid cannot close. The pupil is deep blue, resembling a large cat. It is said that wherever he looks, layered reflections of a blue cat appear; when he gazes at a pond, river, or lake, the blue cat panics and stirs, and all that is seen becomes blurred.

—Wu Jian’an

“Wu Jian’an: Blue Tiger” Exhibition View, PIFO Gallery, 2024

As Dr. Shi Chenye notes, Wu Jian’an’s work cleverly embodies a core idea in Derrida’s philosophy: reality always resides in the gap between revelation and concealment. This notion seems to resonate perfectly with the metaphor of the Blue Tiger. Accordingly, “the gap” becomes another key concept of this exhibition.

Through the gaps between walls, viewers catch glimpses of a secret chamber composed of purple walls and a blue floor. Suspended within is a dazzling silver “skeleton”—the fourth spatial installation of the work Color. It feels like a suddenly staged silent play, or like the entrance to a transcendent world in The Peach Blossom Spring. The desire to see the whole scene remains unfulfilled; the objects before the viewer, seeming both real and illusory, resist description. Strange memories and bizarre associations peel away layers of intellectual constraint, layering the work with multiple, ambiguous meanings. In this fleeting instant, “myth” is born.

"In the southern lands, there lived an elderly man who, at a hundred years old, had a son, greatly cherished. The son delighted in eating horseshoe crabs, especially raw, relishing the blue blood that dripped from their bodies and stained his teeth and lips.

One day, he obtained a rotten horseshoe crab. Unwilling to discard it, he swallowed it despite its state, and violently vomited, spewing several buckets of blue blood. Wherever the blood touched the ground, tiger shapes appeared. The son was greatly astonished, and the villagers, hearing of it, were equally amazed.

A curious local informant reported this to the magistrate. The magistrate’s wife went to see it and treated it as a precious treasure. She instructed the magistrate to punish the son under charges of fishing theft and force him to eat the rotten horseshoe crab again. The son vomited violently, the tiger-shaped blood spreading chaotically. The magistrate used white paper to press and copy the bloodstains, creating a scroll of a hundred tigers.

The magistrate’s wife was delighted and bribed the local governor with a hundred gold coins, presenting the scroll and narrating the son’s strange events. The governor, intrigued, examined the scroll and saw it as a rare treasure worth a thousand gold coins to offer to King Qi.

That night, as the governor again viewed the scroll by flickering candlelight, he suddenly saw the hundred tigers depicted in the scroll attacking one another—claws and fangs tearing, howling ferociously—and the paper itself seemed to disintegrate. Terrified, he abandoned the torn scroll and fled. Two days later, he sent servants to seize the magistrate, cutting off his thighs."

—Wu Jian’an

“Wu Jian’an: Blue Tiger” Exhibition View, PIFO Gallery, 2024

Passing through the low, narrow doorway, the final gallery is filled with mirrored surfaces. Moving cautiously around a corner, one encounters lifelike specimens of monstrous forms, reminiscent of the creatures recorded in the Shan Hai Jing. Their abnormal bodies carry mysterious signs, hinting at glimpses of the future. In this moment, the symphony and interplay of works within the same space might even disrupt what seems predetermined, or tear a branching path into the unfolding of what is yet to come.

“Wu Jian’an: Blue Tiger” Exhibition View, PIFO Gallery, 2024

At the far end of the room stands a limestone sculpture, its surface marked with countless fingerprints, inevitably prompting one to imagine the presence of some “superhuman” force: what kind of power could leave silky traces on stone as if drawing in wet sand? Or might there exist a moment when even hard stone can be reshaped, much like how Venetian glass masters tame molten glass with fire into a pliable, flowing form?

As a recurring motif in Wu Jian’an’s practice, the artist believes that “myth” can take multiple forms: it can be a kind of “documentary literature” recounting vanished ancient civilizations, a subjective truth constructed “in the gap between revelation and concealment,” or a collective unconscious guiding people toward an idealized future. Perhaps, within Wu Jian’an’s artistic temporality, time itself is folded—or even absent. And whenever we encounter inexplicable yet endlessly captivating “wonders of the world” during our travels, we come to realize that we have, in fact, always been living within a myth.

“The Blue Tiger is invisible. The Blue Tiger is visible.”

— Wu Jian’an

Whether it’s the row of plaster sculptures at the entrance, the winding paths of the labyrinth, the subtly translucent curtains and wall gaps, or the low doorways, the exhibition space—through its form, scale, and lighting, in dialogue with the works’ media, forms, and themes—creates a rich and dynamic rhythm. This arrangement encourages the viewer’s body to engage more fully with both the space and the artworks. The interaction is not necessarily entirely comfortable; the compression of movement and the constantly shifting modes of viewing draw the “body” deeper into the act of seeing, or, in other words, heighten the body’s perceptual experience within the space.

“Wu Jian’an: Blue Tiger” Exhibition View, PIFO Gallery, 2024

Scholars such as Edward W. Soja have drawn from Jorge Luis Borges’ literary works to articulate the concept of the “Thirdspace”—a “complex relational field” that transcends the binary of reality and imagination, where time and space, history and the future, intertwine. This exhibition unfolds through the interplay of narrative, spatial design, light and shadow, color and form, media and materiality, presence and absence, and deliberately invites viewers to engage bodily within it. If the “Thirdspace” embodies an openness that transcends oppositions and breaks boundaries, it points to realms that reason alone cannot reach, encouraging the union of “body” and “mind” to apprehend both reality and imagination, exploring the possibilities of deconstructing and reconstructing binary relations. In this sense, the exhibition goes beyond pure visual pleasure, becoming a philosophy to be experienced, inviting the audience into a dialogue on existence and cognition.

“Wu Jian’an: Blue Tiger” Exhibition View, PIFO Gallery, 2024

Wu Jian’an: Blue Tiger

2024.12.21—2025.02.28

PIFO Gallery, Beijing, China