Rejuvenation by Mian Wu

Artist list

Mian Wu

In jewellery production, a single mould can reproduce thousands of identical products. Even in a small factory, you can easily find the moulds of Cartier’s leopard, Tiffany’s key and Van Cleef & Arpels’ clover. They have lost the connection with the expensive price and the symbol of luxury as presented in those boutique stores, but become a shape that can be copied again and again. This is the most realistic scene in our jewellery industry. As the world's most significant production and processing base, the design is absent here, only left replication and copying.

Mian Wu’s work is motivated by such context of jewellery production. In mass production, the various errors will lead to a large number of defective products. They are unqualified copies, but in this way, they obtain the uniqueness that other copies are missing. The copy of a copy produces a unique work. The various familiar shapes from those prestigious brands superimpose layer by layer, which digested the value and symbol of the original brands. Thus, the lifeless replication and the worthless defects gain a new life.