Fang Lijun

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Fang Lijun (born 1963, Handan, Hebei province, China) is an artist based in Beijing.

He has shown work internationally in many exhibitions including “The Next Ones” at Alexander Ochs [1], Beijing, “New Work, New Acquisitions” at the Museum of Modern Art [2] in New York and “Alors, le Chine?” at the Pompidou Centre [3] in Paris. He is represented by Galerie am Gendarmenmarkt [4] in Berlin, Thomas Erben [5] in New York, Soobin Art International [6] in Singapore and Hanmo Gallery [7] in Beijing.

One of the leading proponents of the early 1990s Cynical Realist movement, 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.