Engraved on the reverse Tu Wei-Cheng in Chinese and English, titled Stele No. BM10, numbered 3/3

PROVENANCE:
Lin & Keng Gallery, Taipei

EXHIBITED:
The Beauty and Mystery of Bu Num Civilization Revealed: Tu Wei-cheng Solo Exhibition, MoCA, Taipei, Auguest 8-September 28, 2003

ILLUSTRATED:
The Beauty and Mystery of Bu Num Civilizaiton Revealed, Tu Wei-cheng published, 2003, color illustrated

This sculpture is to be sold with a certificate of authenticity issued by Lin & Keng Gallery, Taipei.

This stone stele has had nineteen rows of sixteen niches each carved into it. In each niche, there is a human figure holding a mysterious object. In the upper-middle portion of the stele there is a larger niche, which contains images of the deity Tuoladike and a number of other Yinjizhi sacred beings, including Liantu, Quegugong, Diqupu, Xiyuanwu, Xianxi and Hualian. This scene, depicting a large number of human figures at worship in a neatly-arranged composition, creates a kind of optical illusion; if the viewer stares at continuously for some time, they have the sense of being transported to a dreamlike mystical realm. (The description given above is an excerpt from the exhibition catalog)

The Bu Num Civilization is a pseudo-civilization created by Tu Wei-cheng, with “artifacts” presented as being archeological findings, including artifacts similar to the Rosetta Stone (in the British Museum) that show human written language as having developed from the kind of unreadable characters that appear on a computer screen.