Yue Wu 吴岳

carving on crystal

Size: 40 x 40 x 5cm 

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Selected work for the 8th edition of the Venice Glass Week exhibition Hub under 35, Palazzo Loredan, Venice, Italy

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The dragon is a symbol of power, as well as a deity that symbolises luck, prays for rain and controls floods. The image of the dragon has been associated with Chinese emperors since ancient times, and the nine dragons were their most powerful motifs, engraved in their dress, weapons and architecture. The artist has reproduced this ancient and powerful image on a disc of crystal, which is transparent and thick at the same time. The eight dragons at the edge of the disc are in different poses, and the one suspended in the centre faces the viewer, like the embodiment of an ancient emperor, whose breath is transformed into a blazing sun in the sky. In the artist's sculpture, the sun is a sculpted, transparent orb, which is also represented as the moon, a distinctive mark often found in the glass sculptures of the artist and his family, a signature of their mastery of sculpture and their blurring of the notion of time in a scene. This translucent sculpture is also used in the carving of the dragon's body and scales, making the biological features of the fish and snake on the dragon more realistic and vivid. In this work, the viewer can feel the perfect balance between the void and the existence, the mythical and the real, the ancient and the modern, the imperial power and the people's livelihood, the lightness and the power.