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
Selected Public Collections
- Canada Botanical Gardens, Canada
- St Catherine’s College, Oxford University, UK
- Ashmolean Museum Oxford University, UK
- University of Cambridge, UK
- Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel
- National Museum of Singapore, Singapore
For full list of exhibitions, art fairs awards and collections, please contact the gallery at enquiry@ipreciation.com
Images of artworks
