In 2020, Wenjue launched her eponymous studio Wenjüe Lu with partner Chufeng Fang as an artist duo. Wenjüe Lu seeks to restore a sense of “slowness” to the ever-accelerating world. Though majored in fashion design, Wenjue seeks to disintegrate fashion away from the construct known as trend. The studio shall serve as a multidisciplinary platform integrating the multiple forms of different mediums, a visual and aesthetic way to tell a story, to put out a statement, to disclose truths about oneself. Wenjue and Chufeng are repulsed by the idea of mechanically reproduced commodities, and prefers treating each of their output individual works of art made by hand.
Insisting on design and craft on a hands-on basis, Wenjüe Lu devoted itself to emphasize the rediscovery and the re-cherishing of hand-weaving and traditional folk craftsmanship; to the possibilities of naturally-colored fibers, on its different shades and textures, while infusing its ongoing exploration of their philosophy of life born within the process into the creations.
We seek to restore a sense of “slowness” to the ever-accelerating world.
Wenjüe Lu was founded in 2020 seeking to recover what is being overlooked by this fast-paced time. Through combining the authentic traditions across communities, while retaining its unique historical and cultural significance, with the aesthetic of contemporary art driven by emotive expressions to become an artistic entity that defies singular definition— focusing simultaneously and inter-sectionally on studio art, garments, communal happenings, and cultural workshops. We’re driven by a Taoist worldview.
Carried by the likes of Dover Street Market and Net-A-Porter, we also directly offers our creations right here on our site. We aim to emphasize the rediscovery and the re-cherishing of hand-weaving and traditional folk craftsmanship while respecting the natural state of different fibers, from cotton, silk, to linen, hemp… Adopting the fabrics as one of various rhetorical devices within the Wenjüe Lu language.
We believe in the eternal companionship between garment and body. What remains in the end returns to the land; the garment collections are made with the intention for each piece to last, with every use, every wear. Through Wenjüe Lu’s Lifelong Mending Initiative, create ever-lasting memories, with care.
Wenjue Lu & Chufeng Fang
Bio
Using soft sculptures, fiber art in conjunction with poetry, Wenjue Lu and Chufeng Fang are an artist duo seeking to provoke through the disguised plainness of natural-colored fibers. Born in Beijing and Jieyang, China respectfully, Wenjue obtained her B.F.A. in fashion design at Parsons School of Design while Chufeng obtained his B.A. in media and culture at NYU. They began working together since 2021 under the name Studio Wenjüe Lu exploring the relationship between stillness, fragility, anxiety, and slowness in an ever-accelerating world.
Artist Statement
“ The works produced through our bodies are a result of letting go. We’re repelled by a vision: A giant, constantly spinning wheel that we called world, fueled by lives strolling through a linear production of history, obsessed with acceleration and accumulation. Kaleidoscopic madnesses. As two human beings, like everyone else, we are inevitably governed by this unbearable thing called ego, so unbearable it dissolves all the desire for us to work as one entity, but to work as none: the bodies as the vehicle and minds as the filter, we lend ourselves to poetry and dreamscapes, we work to carve out a space of Tao, where “Heaven’s Will and Human Affairs Are One”(天人合一). This alternative world, in which human is no longer at the center, also possess the mundane, the fragmentary, and a newfound slowness. This world can, at the same time but not all at once, be hopeful, dreadful, dreamy, haunting, mesmerizing, bleak, deceitful, or sobering ”
Exhibitions:
Jan 2022 Duo exhibition, Beyorslf Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, US
Feb-Mar 2022 Selected Poetic Transfigurations, LATITUDE Gallery New York, New York, NY, US
Aug 2022 - Mar 2023 Fished, The Canvas at the Oculus, New York, NY, US
Nov-Dec 2022 Desert Dhyāna 禪漠, SSSSS, New York, NY, US
Apr-May 2023 Alternate Side Parking, Starta Arta Gallery, NY, US
May 2023 Playground, Stilllife Art and Design Fair, New York, NY, US
May-Jun 2023 Evertree: Bark (2019), SELENE, New York, NY US
Jun 2023 Horticulture in Circles 圓藝, SSSSS, New York, NY, US
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Events:
Dec 2021 Warmth in Beauty: Fou Shop Winter Holiday Market, Fou Gallery, Brooklyn, NY, US
Jul 2022 Of the Virgo - Album Pre-release Art Show, Berry Street Community Garden, Brooklyn, NY, US
Aug 2022 Bonfire 2022 - Peace & Bonfire, Forest Park Bandshell, Queens, NY, US
Dec 2022 Broome Room, Sohotel Art Space, New York, NY, US
Apr 2023 AAAAH!, Soho, New York, NY, US