One of the main proponents of the 1990s cynical realist movement, Fang Lijun's work encapsulates the disillusionment of young people in China, a generation defined by the events in Tiananmen Square and the internal domestic policies of China. Built around loose narratives Fang customize images feelings of disappointment, anguish, and rebellion, its suggestions of fiction transmitted through his style of illustration and resubmission bald protagonist.Fang's practice exhibits a rarefied technical skill rigorously studied through his Social Realist training, the combination of this aesthetic with references to contemporary comics, folk art, and dynastic painting characterize a changing national identity, the distillation of a position of integrity of tradition and the modern world.
Fang monumental sized prints revive the ancient Asian practice of printing on wood - a complicated and demanding of the stature of a "negative" image on a panel, coating the surface with ink, and impressing the image on paper, each different color and tone requires a separate plate and the print order. Due to its immense scale, Fang's images are composed of several adjacent rolls, the long strips to create both an emotional fragmentation of the image, and create a reference to the memory and historical evidence. Thematically, each of these prints describe the plight of the individual against the 'mass', creating a spiritual contemplation of solitude the quest for personal probity face of adversity.
Fang's painting 30th Mary evokes these same sentiments with a humorous effect. Reminiscent of paintings on the ceiling of the Church in Europe, Fang portrays an order of promotion of these same Kewpie figures, each based in its own image. Executed with painstaking hyper-realism, the storm clouds develop as a funnel rather than a promise rolling portal. In contrast to the palette pop kitsch and the provision of grotesque cherubs, Fang's painting is about the sanctity of a cynical ideological guarantee empathy.
Tags: Art, Painting