Ju Ming 朱銘 (b. 1938)

Ju Ming 朱銘 (b. 1938, Taiwan) was born Ju Chuan-Tai to a poor rural family in Miaoli County, Taiwan. After completing his primary school education, he began working at the young age of fifteen. Encouraged by his father, Ju undertook his apprenticeship with famous local craftsman, Lee Chinchuan, and acquired himself the mastery of wood-carving when he was barely twenty. 1968 marked a turning point in Ju Ming’s life as an artist when he became an apprentice of Yuyu Yang, a significant sculptor and pioneer of the modern art movement in Taiwan.

Yang broadened Ju Ming’s artistic vision by giving him opportunities to display his talent, as well as providing guidance. He also taught the artist to express himself freely by imparting to him the philosophy of free expression of forms and feelings, and inculcated him with the aesthetic values of simplicity and embracing environmentalism.

Ju’s first solo exhibition, arranged by Yang in 1976, raised public attention for his Nativist Series and also paved way for the following Taichi Series. The Taichi Series is an important milestone signifying the maturity of the artist’s sculptural language and aesthetic style, where he found himself being able to wield his exquisite craftsmanship with complete ease and freedom, reaching the stage of forgetting self in the process. In 2002, Ju Ming ceased creating his Taichi Series.

Prior to his first visit to New York in the early 1980s, Ju Ming started creating wooden sculptures for the Living World Series. He brought some wooden sculptures with him to New York and created more work during his stay in America. These works were subsequently exhibited in a New York art gallery and received an overwhelming success. Since then, Ju’s artistic development on the Living World Series has undergone various stages of development and it has become his central theme of artistic creation alongside his famed Taichi Series; depicting social phenomena with his own language, a way of reconciling the traditional woodcarver’s technique with modern abstraction. Portraying various age groups and walks of life both at work and at play, the Living World Series encapsulates the rich diversity of humanity. While the first Living World Series employed wood figures to depict the nonchalant and mundane lives of trapped individuals in society, the second series is a myriad of anonymous faceless figures with an added touch of humour, made from bronze and foam rubber moulds.

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2022 | Art: A Human Practice – A Retrospective Exhibition by Ju Ming, iPreciation, Singapore
2018 | Ju Ming Living World Series – Ballet, Ju Ming Museum, New Taipei City, Taiwan
2017-2018 |Ju Ming Living World Series – A Decade of Wood Sculptures, iPreciation, Singapore
2016 | Ju Ming’s Special Art Exhibition, Pingtung Art Museum, Pingtung, Taiwan
2015 | Ju Ming’s World of Colours, Taitung Art Museum, Taitung, Taiwan
2015 | Ju Ming Travelling Exhibition, Chengdu, Chongqing, Dalian, Shanghai, China
2014 | Ju Ming – Sculpting the Living World, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Hong Kong
2013 | Ju Ming Solo Exhibition, Farglory Financial Center, Taipei, Taiwan
2011 | Ju Ming – Swimming, iPreciation, Singapore
2010 | Ju Ming, National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China
2010 | Ju Ming Swimming, iPreciation, Hong Kong
2009 | Ju Ming Taichi Exhibits, Singapore
2008 | Living World Exhibition, Singapore
2007 | Meet us at Art Beijing, NAEC, Beijing, China
2007 | iPRECIATION Exhibition, KIAF, Seoul, Korea
2006 | Taichi Sculpture Exhibition, National Museum of Art, Beijing, China
2006 | Solo Exhibition, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, Taichung, Taiwan
2005 | The Living World Series, iPreciation, Singapore
2004 | Solo Exhibition, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore
2003 | Solo Exhibition, Berlin, Germany
2000 | Solo Exhibition, Brussels, Belgium
1999 | Solo Exhibition, Luxembourg City, Luxembourg
1997 | Solo Exhibition, Vendome Square, Paris, France
1995 | Retrospective Exhibition, Hakone Open-air Museum, Japan
1991 | Solo Exhibition, Museum of Contemporary Art of Dunkerque, France
1991 | Solo Exhibition, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, UK
1991 | Solo Exhibition, Southbank Centre, London, UK
1989 | Solo Exhibition, Singapore
1986 | Solo Exhibition, National Museum of Singapore, Singapore
1984 | Solo Exhibition, Birashri Institute of Modern Art, Bangkok, Thailand
1984 | Solo Exhibition, Ayala Museum, Manila, Philippines
1978 | Solo Exhibition, Tokyo Central Museum, Tokyo, Japan
1976 | Solo Exhibition, National Museum of History, Taipei, Taiwan

Selected Group Exhibitions

2017 | Art New York Art Fair 2017 – Group Exhibition
2016 | ENVISION – Sculptures@the Garden City, Singapore
2016 | Art Southampton Art Fair 2016 – Group Exhibition
2015 | Art Paris Art Fair 2015 Group Exhibition
2015 | Art Silicon Valley Art Fair 2015 ‐ Group Exhibition

Awards

2010 | Art Monaco Award for Living World Series
2007 | 18th Fukuoka Asian Culture Prize, Art and Cultures Prize, Japan 2004 | 24th National Cultural Award of R.O.C
2002 | 2nd Enku Grand Award, Gifu, Japan
2000 | 4th Tokyo Creative Award conferred to Ju Ming Museum, Foreign Award, Japan
1998 | Fok Ying Tung Award of Fok Ying Tung Foundation, Hong Kong
1976 | Chinese Literature and Art Award from the Chinese Writers’ and Artists’ Association
1976 | Ten Outstanding Young Persons Award from Junior Chamber National Award for Literature and Arts from National Culture and Arts Foundation, Taiwan
1967 | Third Prize for Sculpture at the 22nd Taiwan Provincial Fine Arts Exhibition
1966 | Prize of Excellence for Sculpture at the 21st Taiwan Provincial Fine Arts Exhibition