The first retrospective show of Chinese-American artist, Mu Pan, opened at Colección SOLO, a private museum and amazing collection in Madrid, Spain. This exhibition will be on display until July 26, 2019.
Mu Wen Pan was born in Taichung City, Taiwan, in 1976, and initially opted for art school as a means of escaping a career in the military. He moved to the USA in 1997 with his family and studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York where he earned an MFA with honors in 2007. A firm believer in humanity's basic need for narrative in visual imagery, Mu Pan describes his work as “quite simply about telling stories.” In his intricate battle scenes, human figures, beasts and bizarre mixtures of the two come together in epic life-and-death struggles.
With influences ranging from Hong Kong cinema of the 1980s and 1990s to Japanese manga and kaiju movies, he incorporates elements of Chinese history and mythology to tell epic stories and legends with modern sensibilities. Mu Pan's artwork is never about art for its own sake – in his own words, “I am just an otaku who draws.”
As an artist who tells stories of epic, large-scale battles, war is one of Mu Pan's primary inspirations. He often draws from the theatre of modern events to find inspiration for his work. “Usually, when I'm excited about something I saw or read on the media, or from my daily life, I first associate the subject with a monster or some creatures on a large scale, then think about who it will be fighting with.”
This outstanding exhibition brings together 20 paintings and drawings by the artist from 2014 to 2019, with a trailer of the documentary currently in progress by the collection, as well as documented sources and references used by Mu Pan, including plates by ukiyo-e master, Utagawa Kuniyoshi.
"Mu Pan y Otras Bestias" will be on display until July 26, 2019.
