1960年生于中国舟山，1986年毕业于浙江美术学院师范系，1995年毕业于汉堡艺术学院自由艺术系。他在1985创立”红色幽默”，1990年创立”国际红色幽默”。
作为中国’八五美术新潮运动的重要人物之一，吴山专的艺术实践打破了诸如“观看”，“凝视”和“体验”这一类约定俗成的视觉艺术概念，他的身上汇集了草根智慧、思想实践与当代艺术的荒诞精神。吴山专与他的妻子英格合作，将你带入一个需要“阅读”的世界。他们不是视觉奇观的创造者，而是推翻真理，提出各种假设的智者，是意识形态的伪造者和日常神学的阐释者。
吴山专将自己定义为罪犯、中间人、观光者和劳动力。吴山专创造的不是所谓艺术品而是“吴的物”。从90年代早期以来大量的“吴的物”中，我们看到的是一种对完全开放，“超越界限”的渴求；吴山专对于数学和逻辑的沉迷让我们从他的作品中感觉到一种奇特的真理。对于一个听命于各种各样的信仰和习惯的社会来说，这是一种“伪造的”真理。萨特有句话说得好：“人就是一包无用的激情。”而吴山专就是用这种无用的激情来发现“无用的真理”。二十多年来，伪字、物权、单性、二手水、观光者信息、完美的括号、鸟先于和平等一系列“无用的真理”成为吴山专所建构的个体意识形态中的重要元素。这种意识形态就是对我们所习以为常的观念系统和经验的深刻批判与反思。
在观念艺术普遍面临重新思考的时期，吴山专表现出观念创造的活力与思索的能量。他的作品饱含幽默与犀利的智慧，表现出反形而上的主动性、对日常政治的洞察力和对权力系统隐性工作以及民主现状的敏感。
Born in China in 1960. 1985 founded Red Humour. 1990 founded Red Humour International. Since 1991 he has been working and exhibiting collaboratively with Thorsdottir Thor’s Daughter Pulverization Service.
One of the key figures of the ’85 New Wave Art Movement in China, Wu Shanzhuan’s practice defies use of conventional visual art terms such as “watch”, “stare” and “experience” to engage with. Instead, pulling together street smartness, intellectual experimentation and the spirit of the absurd in contemporary art, Wu Shanzhuan and his collaborator Inga Svala Thorsdottir draw you into a world where “read” becomes the key term. They are not creators of visual spectacles, but rather overthrowers and discoverers of truths and propositions, as well as counterfeiters of ideology and interpreters of everyday theology.
Wu Shanzhuan defines himself as criminal, intermediary, tourist and labor. The works Wu Shanzhuan creates are not the granted artworks but rather “Wu’s Things”. From the large number of “Wu’s Things” made in the early 1990s, we see a desire for full opening and “transcending the boundaries” and his obsession with mathematics and logic which brings a strange sense of truth to his works. For a society dictated by a variety of faiths and customs, this is an “adulterated” truth. Wu never tires of quoting from Sartre: “People are a bundle of useless passion”. The use for his useless passion is to find “useless truths”. For more than 20 years, Wu Shanzhuan has used the forumulas “pseudo-words”, “thing’s right(s)”, “parthenogenesis”, “secondhand water”, “tourist information”, “perfect bracket” and “bird before peace”, all of which are “useless truths”, to weave his personal ideology. This ideology constitutes a profound critique to the system of concepts and experiences that we are accustomed to.
In the era when conceptual art generally faces a rethink, the works attest a vibrancy of concept and the power of thoughts. It is a rich collection of intriguing humor and sharp wit, spontaneous anti-metaphysical actions, insights into everyday politics, sensitivity to invisible workings of power systems and adherence to the fundamental state of democracy.
