Fu Wenjun at Premio Arte Roma 2016

Roma, Italy, September 18, 2016 (Newswire.com) - ​On the night of 16th September, the opening ceremony of Premio Arte Roma 2016 was held at Museo Archeologico Stadio di Domiziano, Piazza Navona (Rome, Italy). The conceptual photography work of Chinese contemporary artist Fu Wenjun was selected by the jury of Premio Arte Roma 2016 from thousands of artists all around the world.

60 selected artists including Wenjun are invited to the group exhibition of Premio Arte Roma at Museo Archeologico Stadio di Domiziano from 16th September to 30th October 2016.

Prof. Francesco Gallo Mazzeo and Prof. Sergio Lombardo was present at the opening and delivered speeches for this grand and important cultural event in the autumn of Rome.

"National Treasure", the selected work of Wenjun, is a conceptual photography series created in 2014. In the creation, he uses as figures the Buddhist statues in world important museums, take the technique of positive and negative image, borrow the form of the photographic film to present, so ultimately to convey a quiet, solemn visual effect.

During the interview of Italian Enpleinair News TV on the opening ceremony, Wenjun said: "This time I choose the museum collections of Buddhist statues that are away from their home country. Even though they are named 'national treasure', they have already gone beyond the boundary and the concept of a "nation", becoming world common owned treasure. But for this, I am always questioning, so I find such a ready-made object like photographic film." said the artist, "In my opinion, film and replication technology, today represent the starting point of the discussion of cultures. The Western countries who own the "national treasure" are like the original photographic films that load the "images".  They own the rights of replication."

Fu Wenjun is based in Chongqing, China, where he has been working as an artist since attending Sichuan Fine Arts Institute.

Wenjun's artworks tackle strictly cultural issues such as the Eastern and Western history, the heritage of traditional Chinese culture in a rapidly changing society, the relation between different cultures in the age of globalization, industrialization and urbanization in Chinese cities. Although his practice incorporates installation and oil painting, it is the use of conceptual photography that predominantly defines his work.

Through photography and image manipulation, the artist has created a channel through which he can truly communicate his vision, using the images to extract the true meaning of a theme and pushing a deeper focus onto it.

Having exhibited internationally, Wenjun's artworks have gained numerous awards and have been collected by galleries and museums across the world, such as Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, Today Art Museum, Old Summer Palace Museum, Guangdong Museum of Art, Société Nationale des Beaux Arts of France, Egypt Ahmed Shawki Museum.

Source: Fu Wenjun Studio