marvin minto fang: 'a sua' and 'bonsai (tree)'

‘a-sua’, 2009 image courtesy of pékin fine arts

‘a-sua’ and ‘bonsai (tree)’ are the most recent works by chinese artist marvin minto fang. ‘a-sua’ is an installation of wooden soldiers, an army of camphor-carved ‘reincarnated trees’ which bear silent witness to the essential role and intrinsic life force of living trees. each individual piece is ‘reborn’ from one solid piece of a camphor tree, hand-carved into a semi-abstract figure, forming the base for a new tree sculpture on top.

image courtesy of pékin fine arts

image courtesy of pékin fine arts

image courtesy of pékin fine arts

image courtesy of pékin fine arts

‘bonsai (tree)’, 2009 image courtesy of pékin fine arts

fang’s tree sculptures ‘bonsai (tree)’, are an emphatic plea to preserve the tree as a ‘renewable life force’, beginning first by recognizing environmental deterioration as the result of our own destructive acts. the tree has been stripped down and renewed into a tree once again.

image courtesy of pékin fine arts

image courtesy of pékin fine arts

image courtesy of pékin fine arts