Taichi Shadow Boxing (Pair)
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1991 Camphor wood 25(L) x 19.5(W) x 44(H) cm (Left) Signed Ju Ming in Chinese and dated '92(L), '91(R) |
Estimate
1,900,000 - 2,800,000 56,100 - 82,700
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Sold Price
2,360,000 71,645
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Belonging to the latter of Ju Ming's "Taichi Series" of single and double figures, "Taichi Shadow Boxing" expresses the corresponding relation between the two boxers. The scholar of art history in Oxford University, Michael Sullivan, said: "Taichi is also a form of ritual combat in which two figures actively oppose each other. In Taichi boxing, the participant moves so that he (more rarely she) extends beyond himself. Know your enemy as well as yourself, wrote the ancient military strategist Sun Zi, and you will be invincible.1
The French art critic, Jean-Luc Chalumeau, ever praised Ju Ming's art: "However, that was referring to lines, or forms worked upon in the third dimension, whereas Ju Ming has to solve the constant problem of extricating, from the massiveness of a block of bronze, the sensation of a Taichi Art in which balance must be kept in the midst of disequilibrium. "Taichi Spin Kick"and "Taichi Shadow Boxing" seem to revive the miraculous discoveries of Greek statuary, hidden in the mass of these strangely agile forms2.
1 Michael Sullivan, The Art of Ju Ming, Ju Ming Taichi Sculptures, (an exhibition catalogue for Ju Ming at South Bank Centre, London, Aug. 13 to Sept. 13, 1991), Hanart T Z Gallery, Hong Kong, 1993
2 Jean-Luc Chalumeau, Ju Ming, Editions Cercle d'Art, 2002, p. 79