Wu Ching has been honored in the arts community at home and abroad for his “exquisite woodcarvings”, meaning that his ingenious woodcarving technique realistically depicts nature.

Wu Ching often takes wood to its extreme limits. The entire subject is carved out of a single piece of wood, thorough shaving and hollowing, minutely carving and chiseling to capture reality in exquisite detail right down to a strand of fur.

Such “fur carving” was also termed “gossamer fur carving” in that the carved lines were minute enough to depict a strand of fur, as if the carving line were like a gossamer fiber. This allowed depicting the wings of insects or the appearance of human skin, but required perseverance to accomplish.

The carving implement requirements were also greater than for ordinary woodcarving, since the knife had to be sharp and sturdy to cut a fiber-thin line smoothly, something that ordinary woodcarving knives could not do. Whereupon, Wu Ching successfully improved the woodcarving knife to enhance the degree of minute detail he could carve.

The 1986 woodcarving “Zen” featured a cicada wing carved to one-third the thickness of a sheet of newspaper, and its veins were consistently visible from above and below the wing. The fine hairs on the cicada’s body and the appearance of its hard shell beneath were also concretely displayed.

In his 1995 woodcarving “Walking Woman,” Wu Ching hollowed out the entire piece of wood and scraped it down to a transparent thickness, carving a 20 kilogram piece of wood down to just 23 grams, close to the 20 gram weight of a sheet of newspaper.

The thread stitches, embroidered patterns and classic lace fringe of the underpants look just like the real thing, utterly manifesting “empty and beautiful.”

In his 1996 woodcarving “Dharma Bliss,” the entire work is carved from boxwood. His self image captures the texture of his skin, especially the realistically chaotic variations of skin tissue and hair follicles and abundant elasticity as if that of a real person.