To celebrate an important milestone in life reaching a century, artist Wu Zehui held a solo exhibition titled “Gratitude to the Past, Facing the Future” in Walnut City from August 16th to 22nd. The exhibition showcased nearly sixty pieces of artwork from different periods, including sketches, oil paintings, watercolors, and traditional Chinese paintings, fully reflecting her artistic journey.
Wu Zehui jokingly refers to her creations as “random movement.” As a major in traditional Chinese painting in college, her works naturally exude the essence of brushwork and woodcutting. Even when expressed in oil paintings, they still carry a strong Eastern artistic conception. By combining abstract fluidity with expressive techniques, she presents a unique fusion of Eastern and Western styles, especially in still life sketches that best express her inner emotions.
Differing from conventional academic oil painters, Wu Zehui excels at infusing ink sensibility, calligraphic strokes, and special compositions into her works. For example, using circular compositions to tell stories, she makes seemingly chaotic abstract pieces actually allude to subtle emotions and intimacy among women, tinged with a soft poetic sense.
Many of the artworks in the exhibition were spontaneously created outdoors under sunlight, capturing the present atmosphere within three to four hours. The marks of the palette knife and background colors become irreplicable imprints. At the invitation of the former mayor of Walnut City, Wu Zehui sketched landscapes in local parks, schools, and government buildings with a ballpoint pen and then completed them with watercolors. She believes that sketching is an art form that captures the momentary charms with concise lines, emphasizing speed, summarization, and vividness, serving as an important source of her creative inspiration.
The styles of the works in this exhibition are diverse, ranging from realism to abstraction, from narrative to symbolic, all reflecting the transformations in Wu Zehui’s life journey. She categorizes her creations into three themes: realistic storytelling, abstract freedom, and symbolic meanings. These themes either depict life and existential meanings through concrete portrayal, or flow freely with emotions resembling dance or music, sometimes using compositions and objects to metaphorically represent inner emotions and life experiences.
Wu Zehui introduced that the “flower imagery” uses scraping and layered colors to display an atmosphere of abstract freedom. Another piece combining an abacus and a teacup integrates realism and symbolism, signifying the “calculations and survival” in life, reminding people to take timely breaks.
Having graduated from the Department of Fine Arts at Chinese Culture University in Taiwan and obtained a master’s degree from the San Francisco Art University, Wu Zehui has held numerous solo and group exhibitions and received awards regularly. She currently serves as the Secretary-General of the American Chinese Arts Association. With life experiences, she finally feels she can “paint for herself,” finding the most genuine artistic language between East and West, realism and abstraction.