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

Ju Ming was born in 1938 in Tunghsiao, Miaoli County, which is a center of wood carving in Taiwan. He received very little formal education in the arts, and at the age of 15, he was apprenticed to Lee Chin-chuan, a famous traditional master wood-carver. When he was 30, he decided to give up a well-paid position as a chief craftsman in a large woodcarving factory. He left Miaoli to study sculpture with the master sculptor Yuyu Yang with whom he studied for eight years. Yang suggested to Ju Ming that he take up Taichi boxing, the traditional Chinese boxing, as he had a frail constitution, and it would help him to improve his health. Ju Ming soon discovered that practicing the ancient 'martial art' did more than just make him stronger: it gave him much food for thought and opened up profound new vistas for his creative work. Ju gained firsthand experience of the awe-inspiring vital force that circulates through all living creatures, and as he gradually adopted this new philosophy and internalized its principles, he also started to express it in his art.

For Ju Ming, the "Taichi Series" is the starting point of his own unique style. He expresses the vital inner force discovered in Taichi boxing in a form that immediately resonates with a profound understanding of the energy within. In the "Taichi Series", Ju creates a tension between geometric abstract forms which bring forth the active and forceful postures of the figures. This, along with the contrast between the dynamic poses and the static material, and the rough and terse finishes create a rich rhythm in the works. The sculptures also play with a colorful effect of change between light and shadow. In "Single Whip", Ju Ming found his own voice and creates works of tremendous vitality and irresistible power as he explores the pure energy of traditional Taichi boxing.

In a sense it is an instinctive combination. In creation of "Taichi Series", the profile of body presented by Ju Ming through bold and resolute strokes in the works just coincide with the abstract ideology of modern sculpture. Every piece of work in "Taichi Series" emanates the abstract mobility. Besides emancipation f rom formula of shadowboxing, he has also remolded our cognition habit about mobile space, so that relationship between the works and the space become abstract. Especially, after occurrence of such abstract relationship, we find that every works allows us to view in different angle, and the patches under each angle of view can be in an organic echo with the overall works.

The Taichi Series by Ju Ming can be broadly divided into two categories: those depicting individuals demonstrating their skills and postures, and those that examine the contradictory relationship between opposing forces - the twin sparring figures. With the single Taichi figures, the force and rhythm of Taichi are expressed through body movements and postures. However the nature of Taichi is such that there are two types of chi: the Yin and the Yang. These two entities share a reciprocal relationship and are united as one, creating a harmonious and powerful movement.In this "Taichi Series - Boxing", he has given ultimate presentation the pith of shadowboxing yielding to dissolve attacking force, treating rigidity with suppleness, borrowing external force and complying with external orientation.

The scholar of art history in Oxford University, Michael Sullivan, said: "Taichi is also a form of ritual combat in which two figures actively oppose each other. In Taichi boxing, the participant moves so that he (more rarely she) extends beyond himself. Know your enemy as well as yourself, wrote the ancient military strategist Sun Zi, and you will be invincible!" (Ju Ming Taichi Sculptures, Hanart T Z Gallery, Hong Kong, 1993)

The French art critic, Jean-Luc Chalumeau, ever praised Ju Ming's art: "However, that was referring to lines, or forms worked upon in the third dimension, whereas Ju Ming has to solve the constant problem of extricating, from the massiveness of a block of bronze, the sensation of a Taichi Art in which balance must be kept in the midst of disequilibrium. "Taichi Spin Kick" and "Taichi Shadow Boxing" seem to revive the miraculous discoveries of Greek statuary, hidden in the mass of these strangely agile forms." (Jean-Luc Chalumeau, Ju Ming, Editions Cercle d'Art, 2002, p. 79)