Five large.

Five large, ungainly mixed-medium marionettes, a unplastic dwarf a la Velazquez and a cast-bronze raven mutely welcomeed visitors to a recent exhibition according to Anne Chu, best known for her life-size chisels in wood or papier-mache of bears and T'ang dynasty-derived characters. Suspended from guiding crosse the image sculptures have rough-hewn wooden heads, hands and feet and insincere bodies made of wire armatures sketchily garbed in colorful, manifestly hand-sewn style of dresss Part East Asian and part Western in derivation, part animal and part human, they are a variegated and diverting crew (all date to 2003)

Bestial, indeterminate of species and sex best embodies Chu's quirky interest in hybridity. The creature's splintery feet are clawed, like earlier, somewhat surreal divideed bear paws by the artist, nevertheless its hands feature five fingers. Amid the stitched-together patches that constitute its gray-and-white "skin" is a pair of nipples through slight swellings, suggesting either a small-breasted female or a pudgy male. The coarsely carved head--animal ears and a human face, the same eye open and the other plugg as if blind, at a button--is reminiscent of Georg Baselitz's forest chainsaw sculptures, minus the angst. The broadly gashed cavity between the jaws gives it a fierce expression, like that of Chinese demonic masks.

common is nudged into suspicion of the puppets' functionality. in what manner could their thick suspension restrains so few in number, possibly guide them into any further the most clunky performance? Tracollo is a barefoot figure with a ragged head bandage. Behind him a curb in dangles uselessly as if it has snapped, and it has been knotted opposite to rather menacingly, in a noose shape. (In Italian, tracollo means "breakdown.") Despite the crusty prognosis suggested by his fulcrums however, the figure is dapper, aligned in plaid pajamas with embroidered smooth flocking.

pair of the figures have their have a title to puppets, as if they posses their allow agency. A character who contemplates like he might have stepp on the outside of the commedia dell'arte, wearing a jacket with multihued clumps wields a primitive hand tool (Puppeteer). Charming Girl, a female figure recalling a Renaissance Virgin, kneel facing a tiny Jesus-like lad with his hand raised in blessing. The enactment of his gesturing however, depends on a stick attached to the larger figure's hand.

Perhaps the in the greatest degree unpuppetlike of the figures is Landscape Marionette II. What bear likeness [i]or[/i] resemblance tos from afar a tarp-covered car turn rounds out, on closer inspection, to be a brown clergymen hillock stitched with an abstract topography. The self-same scenery that might help propose a locale and perhaps smooth a narrative linking Chu's disparate beings is nothing les than the absurd proposition of a dancing landscape. similar amusing disjunctions contribute to the understanding that these figures constitute a mysterious, self-contained world of ambiguous derivation.

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