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Mu Boyan, Fatty

Mu Boyan is a master sculptor. In his hands, material melts to life. He dresses them with human skin, blushing cheeks and moulds of oxen fat. They stumble, tumble, climb, peer, explode, huddle, all with the doe-eyed shyness of an altar boy. His tool of communication is fat – more specifically, fatty people. He uses them as metaphors in his ongoing discourse. Like Bharti Kher’s iconic bindi, they become a language in themselves.

The visuals at first seem extraordinary – the exploration of the fat nude. Sculpted to perfection with the right touches of whimsy. But, as the eye accustoms to the body, you start observing the movements closely, the interactions between the inanimate. With that arrives the artist’s approach to draw parallels to his culture. China is his anchor. He explores the world through its shifting cultural winds. While the food markets of the west plump up their first world citizens, the depiction of fatty people in Chinese culture was one of prosperity. Fat was a state of abundance and wealth and the region aligned its ideals of success with it.

TITLE: I know, but…..
MEDIUM:Color on resin + already-made object
DIMENSIONS: 165 x 146 x 66 cm
YEAR: 2008
IMAGE CREDIT: AYEGALLERY.COM


Mu’s artistic journey is from the point of questioning, cultural constructs and aesthetic prejudices to this era, wherein fat does not necessarily corroborate to wealth, but shame. The chasm between one belief to another becomes almost a social intervention into the cultural brainwashing subjected on every generation. Mu uses them as dialect to aim at social constructs and tests and teases their fundamentals.

TITLE:Dot
MEDIUM:Color on Stainless Steel
DIMENSIONS: 142 x 37 x 42 cm
YEAR: 2013
IMAGE CREDIT: AYEGALLERY.COM


TITLE:Up and Down
MEDIUM:Color on bronze
DIMENSIONS: 25 x 25 x 5 cm + 25 x 100 x 5 cm
YEAR: 2014
IMAGE CREDIT: AYEGALLERY.COM


About The Artist

Mu Boyan is a contemporary Chinese sculptor. His works are humorous and satirical sculptures, which despite their exaggerated surrealism, maintain a high degree of realism and technical finish. Mu lives and works in Beijing, China.

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