Chu Bingchao

Chu Bingchao
The Buddha Bridge – Candle
2020
Candle, wood
16 x 10 cm

Chu Bingchao
The Buddha Bridge
2022
manuscript
60 x 60 cm

In 2014, during a research trip to a small Northwestern town, I found a half-burnt candle in an abandoned grotto in the wilderness outside the town. From the look of the was, I estimated the candle had been left here dozens of years ago. I held on to the candle. According to a folklore circulating around the town, dozens of years ago, Buddha statues in the grottoes in the area had been knocked down to be used as construction material for a bridge on the river. After that, I had returned to the town several times to look for the bridge, but without success.

One day in 2020, I lit the candle in a dim room and shared this story with a friend. This time, it was our faces that the candle was lighting up. As the story ended and the candle burned out, the bridge also became forever cemented as the bridge in my imagination.

About Chu Bingchao：
Chu Bingchao (b. 1986, Pingliang, Gansu province) currently lives and works in Beijing. He graduated from the Hubei Institute of Fine Arts in 2010 and works across mediums including sculpture, painting, installation, video, and more. Throughout the course of his artistic career, he has consistently focused on social issues, personally placing himself within the symbiotic relationships between the individual and society, and between art and reality. To this aim, he has restored Buddha statues, and altered the shape of mountains, as an adventurer into the wild.