Arthur Yu

How can we be loose?

The Loose School of Kung-fu is my attempt at an answer: A Riso-printed publication composed of a series of oil pastel drawings that dances further and further away from the sites, stories, and pedagogies of Chinese martial arts.

What began as a fascination in the contradiction of the active and the passive both in the teaching of Kung-fu and in our relationship with pedagogy at large, found it's way to influence how I approached image-making. The project became a simple book of conflicting physics: Hot but cold. Here but there. Attack but retreat.

Many of the pictures that performs this best, came after a series of loose associations, trailing from the smoking habits of the storied actor Sammo Hung, to the optical illusions of socks. Here, I hope that these whims of rationale will begin to be questioned by the reader, who can become the one to ask: "What's the point of being loose?"