At Ease in Two Worlds

Back to those marionettes. They are the stars of this show, dominating the main space at MoCA with their sizable physical and psychological presence. Chu created them using a wide range of materials: wood, ceramic, cloth, and more around wire armatures. Long strands of rope suspend the heads and hands; many of them could be made to work, given a team of strong puppeteers at a high elevation. In perhaps the most elegant, Charming Girl, a cloaked woman with a wooden head and hands, wearing a velvet blue and brown robe, kneels before a standing boy, somewhat smaller than she, to whom she's tethered by a wire held in one hand. She closes her eyes, reveling in the royal power she wields over him, while he gestures with an open palm that she fails to see. It's hard to miss Bestial, a demon figure with a frightening countenance, bear paws, and a pear-shaped body, dressed in a patchwork of cloth stretched over a wire armature, rising five feet high while seated on its bulbous rear end.

Chu has also produced marionette landscapes, a poetic, counterintuitive act that either references or recalls the same spirit as Zen master Dogen's Mountains and Rivers Sutra: "The blue mountains are constantly walking.... The walk of the mountains is like that of men; so we must not doubt that the mountains walk simply because they may not appear to stride like humans." To the gods, worldly landscapes must appear mobile, and Chu interprets them with cloth skins, gesturally but beautifully embroidered with a patchwork of colors.

The exhibition amply displays Chu's watercolor studies, some of which she has built up to an opaque skin, others simply executed with a charming flair that reflects the best watercolor traditions of both the Eastern and Western worlds. This dual-worldly existence that seems to transcend time animates her work with a courageous energy that combines artistic polymath with an array of technical talents. It is that energy which makes the Anne Chu exhibit a tour de force.