Call for Help

Two new sections have been added to the Tu Art Gallery web site. One of them includes a general call for help.

"Reviews of Art, Shows, and Exhibitions" reprints a number of newspaper reviews, articles, art book introductions, and television reports about Tu Zhiwei's oil paintings. Some go back as far as 1996.

We know there are a lot more out there, in English, Mandarin, French, Dutch, Russian, and Arabic, for starters. So, on the Tu Art Gallery web site, readers are being asked to send along any reviews or commentaries they may know about:

We have begun compiling here newspaper, magazine, television, and book reviews about the art works of Tu Zhiwei, as we learn of them. If you know of any not included here, please let us know.)

The problem is that many older art show newspaper reviews, descriptive brochures, and the like were published before the Internet was invented, never made it to the web, or are buried too deep (for example, in an unfamiliar foreign language) to be easily discovered.

Probably the most difficult material to find will be notices from foreign art shows of Tu's work from the 1980's and early 1990's -- such as the earliest exhibitions in Guangzhou, the Algiers "World Cultural Convention" in 1987 when he was awarded the "gold prize", or his first gallery shows in Iowa, Illinois, Minnesota, Kansas, and Michigan.

We know there are a lot of other newspaper and magazine reviews out there -- especially from the artist's earlier days in China (1972-1986) and after he emigrated to the U.S. in 1987. If you happen to have a hard copy, please scan and email it. If you know of something suitable on the web, just send along the url.

The same might be said about the other new web section. It's called "Lectures, Installations, and Happenings."

Tu Zhiwei is an active volunteer (consistent with his busy international schedule) for community art organizations. He also often participates in painting demonstrations or college lectures for art students, and from time to time engages in other entertaining 'happenings' like group art installations.

A few past events of this order already have been noted on the web site's 'Happenings' page. Again, however, we're sure there are many more that we haven't discovered, yet, either on the Internet or described in dead tree print.

The artist himself is too busy doing all of these things to do any 'scrapbooking' of his own. We can all help him out -- not to mention, assist future biographers -- by playing catch-up now.