
Fang Lijun’s work encapsulates the disillusionment of China’s youth; a generation defined by the events at Tiananmen Square and China’s internal domestic policies. Constructed around loose narratives Fang’s images personalise sentiments of disenchantment, angst, and rebellion; his fictional suggestions conveyed through his illustrative style and re-occurring bald-headed protagonist.
Fang’s practice exhibits a rarefied technical skill rigorously studied through his Social Realist training; his combination of this aesthetic with references to contemporary comics, folk art, and dynastic painting characterise a national identity in flux, distilling a position of integrity from tradition and the modern world.
Fang’s monumental sized prints revive the ancient Asian practice of woodblock printing -- a complicated and exacting process of carving a ‘negative’ image into a panel, coating the surface in ink, and impressing the image onto paper; each different colour and tone requires a separate plate and order of printing. Due to their immense scale, Fang’s images are composed on several adjoined scrolls; the elongated strips create both an emotive fragmenting of the image, and create a reference to memory and historical testimony. 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 in the face of adversity.
Selected Exhibitions
| 2006 | Kupferstichkabinett Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Germany |
| 2005 | National Galerie / China Art Museum, Beijing, China |
| Art Cologne, Germany | |
| Mahjong, Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland | |
| ART FORUM Berlin 2005, Berlin, Germany | |
| 2002 | Fang Lijun, Between Beijing & Dali, Woodcuts & Paintings 1989 - 2002, Ludwig Forum für InternationaleKunst Aachen |
| 2001 | Fang lijun, Asian Fine Art, Berlin |
| Prüss + Ochs Gallery Germany | |
| 1999 | d’APERTutto, 48th Venice Biennale, Venice |
| 1998 | From Beijing to Amsterdam and Back, Stedelijk Museum/ Galerie Serieuse Zaken, Amsterdam |