Fan Shao Hua

Biography

Fan Shao Hua was born in 1963 in China and is now a Singaporean resident. He graduated from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts with a BA in Fine Arts. Fan won the prestigious award "Painting of the year Award" at the 19th UOB painting of the Year Competition in 2000. He has held many exhibitions overseas and won many other numerous art awards. In January and March 2010 he had solo exhibitions in the prestigious Shanghai and Beijing Art Museum.

Petals of the image: Fan Shaohua

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In January 2010 and March 2010 , Fan Shaohua has solo exhibition in the prestigious Shanghai Art Museum and Beijing Art Museum.

The rapid evolution of art in the past two centuries was fraught with fierce contestations between individuals and groups of various ideologies and beliefs. From the numerous dialectics, one crucial and interesting debate is between abstract painting, and those generally categorised as ‘figurative’ – or assumed as ‘realistic’. This protracted clash reaches its zenith when abstract paintings with extreme emphasis on the flatness of canvas emerged and denounced all figurative paintings for creating the illusion of depth. If one were to trace the genealogy of such a notion of art, it would be clear that it stems from too many preceding practices and discourses of art for one to name all. Yet, closer to the point of its emergence, significant factors that effected the development include events where artists attempted the possibilities of juxtaposing multiple view points on a flat pane, or ventured the application of not just geometrical theory, but form, on painting and drawing. Such a manner of approach, led us towards the subsequent dispute on flatness and depth which encompasses questions like those on ‘easel painting’ and horizontality. In other words, it is from the blurry images of Impressionism to the picture fragmentation of Cubism (pioneered by Cezanne and advanced by Braque and Picasso) that we arrived at the highly politico-cultural battle in the mid 20th century, between the Abstract Expressionists and works of artists from the communist countries who championed the art of Social Realism.

Above are just some possible thoughts when one encounters the abstract images of tranquil ambiguity by Fan Shaohua, an artist who began his career as a figurative portrait painter. Born in 1963, in Guangzhou, Fan majored in art since his secondary school days. And it was then that he was introduced to the Western art discipline in China. Amongst the teachers who laid the cornerstones for his future practice was sculptor, Zhao Jizhao. Eventually graduated from the Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts with a degree, and very importantly, the dexterity in figurative painting, Fan belongs to the post-1978 youth students guided by artists who were educated, or practiced during the stifling Cultural Revolution period. His generation, one so susceptible to the influences of art and cultural trends from around the world since China reopened her doors, attempted diverse ways to break away from the established academic art in China. And often it was to the degree of abandoning painting. A good instance is the experimental and political avant-garde works of the ‘85 Movement’. 

Fan taught in South China University of Fine Arts and his alma mater before settling down to pursue his career in Singapore. And ever since his arrival in 1995, Fan was the recipient of many art awards. In 2000, he deservingly won the Open Section of the 19th UOB Painting of the Year Competition with a poignant oil painting, entitled They. The painting, a commentary on the state of human relationships in an urbanised society, simultaneously revealed him as a Realist painter with a deep social consciousness, and demonstrated his excellent skills in figures and portraitures.

Since his solo exhibition held in Alliance Francaise de Singapur in 2002, Fan has embarked on an exploration into abstract painting – an area of pictorial representation which seems to be his terra incognito. His academic background in Western Painting (which was generally a form of modified Soviet Social Reaism in the art curriculum of China) and achievements in it, however, did not hinder his path towards abstract imagery – an expansion in scope that does not always happen to artists who had already mastered, and had gained recognition in a particular genre.

However, more than purely a migration in his art, from the figurative to the abstract, the development results in a combination of conflicting sources; and an advancement of his practice. This juxtaposition – of contradicting forms and ideas – is evident from the works such as The Moment of Eternity, where his sensitivity to light, shadow and depth are redeployed effectively.

If we were to see each of these pluralistic images in layers, like how he studies the individual petals of a flower, it would be obvious how contesting visual elements are fused without compromising each of their distinctive elements. And if we were to recognise the harmonious and elegant pictorial totality as composed of at least two separate layers, the coexistence of opposing concepts in a single image would be further illuminated.

Ironically, the background layer in many works of this series is depicted as creased paper. Blank paper, often signifying the flat and thin material to be painted, printed, or written upon, is represented in accordance to the principles of photo-realism in this layer. At the same time, it suggestively reminds us of the creasing-paper technique found in traditional Chinese Ink Painting. In such images, the foreground is created when the illusion of creased background is interrupted by the drippings; the expressive and masterful brushstrokes. And thus in a way, the second layer forces the background to ‘confess’ the flatness of the painted canvas.

Depending on where one’s knowledge of art is skewed towards, these spontaneous and expressive lines that form the second layer can be seen as the drippings found in the paintings of Jackson Pollock coupled with the colour dynamism of Colour Field Painting; or alternatively, a reminiscence of the brushstrokes, and techniques used in Chinese painting and calligraphy. The artist himself cites the influences of Western painters like Helen Frankenthaler, Willem de Kooning, Gerhard Richter, and Franz Kline. Nevertheless, the composition of Qi Baishi and the ‘splattered ink’ technique of Zhang Daqian have equal – if not stronger – impact on these works.

To study the images from the latter context – not a progression from Realism to Abstract Expressionism, but in a culture of art where the emphases on brushstrokes, and in a way ‘flatness’, had begun centuries ago – we could generally view this as a visual exploration that draws from the techniques and principles of painting that has its origins from the ancient Chinese art, from artists like Wang Wei of the Tang Dynasty.

More specifically, rather than seeing Fan Shaohua as abandoning his academic background of Social Realism, the abstract works can also be seen as him revisiting the genre which was his first contact with art. Prior to his formal art education, Fan, as a child, was taught to paint birds and landscapes with ink by Ru Yanguang, a painter who practices in the tradition of the Lingnan School. This particular school of painting from Guangdong, whose progenitors can be traced to early 19th century, exerted great influence on the development of painting in the southern region and yielded to the movement, Xin Guohua (New National Painting). In principle, Fan’s approach – of fusing artistic merits of the East and West through oil painting – draws similarity to Gao Qifeng, one the ‘Three Masters of Lingnan’, whose knowledge in Western Realism and Japanese Ink Painting was combined and applied onto his ink painting.

Beneath the visual similarities, within the conceptual level of both Abstract Expressionism and Chinese Ink Painting, the discourses of both advocate the importance of action. While the theorist of ‘Action Painting’ (the other name for Abstract Expressionism) Clement Greenberg prided the movement for ending the illusion of depth by placing ‘action’ in the servitude of liberating the reality of the flatness of the canvas, the Chinese counterpart, like those who practice in the style of the Xieyi, understood their practice as principles of life in action. Whereas one uses art for art’s sakes, the other deemed art as an activity that engages one’s body and soul.

Although the intensity of splattering, splashing and dripping for each of the images varied, none of Fan’s abstract works had reached the point of excessiveness of any ‘action painting’ canvas. Thus, instead of a canvas brimming with drips and splashes, by leaving ample area untouched or ‘empty’, Fan’s images revealed its affiliation with the notion of emptiness – a dominant philosophy in the framework of Chinese Ink Painting. The void in Chinese painting is the space where imagination arises, and continuity of time extends. It is the space for the painting to remain fluid, and where vagueness is treasured. In short, the flow of life persists in such paintings.

Adding a sublime twist, which many painters within this framework failed to grasp, the empty background areas in Fan Shaohua’s painting are actually filled – as mentioned earlier. The elegance of this subtle manifestation of emptiness, with fullness, or vice versa, is best explained in the words of the Qing Dynasty painter, Fan Qi:

‘In painting, much is made of the notion of emptiness-fullness. It is through emptiness that fullness succeeds in manifesting its true fullness. All the same, how many misunderstandings need to be dispelled! People generally believe that it is enough to arrange to have a great deal of unpainted space in order to create emptiness. What interest does this have if it is just inert space? It is necessary that a true emptiness be in some way fully inhabited by fullness. It is emptiness – in the form of hazes, mists, clouds or invisible breaths – that carries all things, drawing them into the process of hidden change. Far from diluting space, these forms of emptiness confer on a picture the unity in which all things breathe as in an organic structure. Emptiness is therefore not at all outside of fullness, and still less is it opposed to it.’

In this case, the image of ‘wrinkled paper’ replaces the ‘hazes, mists, clouds or invisible breaths’. It creates a pictorial emptiness, the missing portions in a painting needed to complete a picture. Emptiness as necessary as the mouth, the nose and the pores; the openings and gaps in a body are necessary for one to breathe and sustain life.

According to Fan Shaohua, apart from his readings on Buddhism and Taoism, the concepts for these works were inspired by his interaction with nature. As a man confronting nature from both physical and spiritual realms, he believes the conflicts which arise from their encounters are anticipations for the return of a greater harmonious state. His artworks are the result of such interaction. Therefore, instead of viewing it as devoid of any social message or acute observation found in his figurative works, it is also a shift from the response of an artist towards society to the grander relation between man and nature. As one who is based in Singapore, spending most of his time in this exceedingly urbanised city, Fan visits his hometown twice a year for new inspiration. A portion of his visit is often spent in the countryside. To date, he has visited the famous mountains of China like Taishan, Lushan and Huangshan. 

By viewing Fan Shaohua’s works in relation to these Oriental perspectives we can see clearly that his choice of the lotus as the theme in his latest abstract works is definitely not aleatory. As the recurrent symbol of purity and beauty, this flower, a subject for innumerable tales and metaphors, appears in not just the culture of the Middle Kingdom, but the rest of Asia as well, like in India and the Middle East. In Buddhism, the lotus, apart from signifying the purity of the mind, stands for spiritual perfection, pacification of human nature and divine birth. An analogy from Lalitavistara Sutra concisely explained how the lotus is valorised: ‘the spirit of the best of men is spotless, like the new lotus in the [muddy] water which does not adhere to it'.

In most of Fan’s paintings from the Lotus Series, the image of lotus, depicted with bold and spontaneous strokes of an ink painter with the medium of oil paint, grows out from the chaos of colours, drips and splatters. As the third layer, the lotus flowers, which seem to float above the surface, congenially disrupt the flatness, and points to a cyclical return to the figurative form.