Fang Lijun

Born: 1963

Biography:

Fang Lijun is an artist based in Beijing . He was born into a wealthy family with a high social status. In the 1990s, there was a cultural movement in China referred to as Cynical Realism of which Fang Lijun was a member . Living in China during this critical time shaped his worldview in terms of his views on art, human values and morality.
Fang Lijun attended Children Cultural Place school. During his time at school, he met Li Xianting (who would later be a famous critic) and was introduced to watercolors, oil paints and ink.
Fang Lijun decided to leave high school to pursue his artistic dream. He made a decision to go to Hebei Light Industry Technology school to study ceramics for three years. However, Fang Lijun did not want to stop his studies there. Instead of having an intellectual job in the ceramics department, he prepared himself to take the entrance exam to enroll at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. He was fascinated by the medium of oil painting and chose it for his final graduation project.
At the beginning of 1992, Fang Lijun moved to Yuanmingyuan village in north-west Beijing. Due to the economy and other difficult cultural issues, painters wanted to create a utopia where they could freely paint and express themselves. That was when Yuanmingyuan village drew artists' attention. At the time, painters like Fang Lijun had to face many obstacles and challenges, particular financial issues. In order to be able to paint, they needed to have funds to buy materials. However, there was no certainty that they would receive any funding, so it was extremely difficult for painters to be able to follow what they love. Fang Lijun and other artists like him had to paint for a living due to the economic pressure.
Fang Lijun made a large number of works featuring the subject "bald heads". Under the influence of his family and friends, his art expresses the freedom, the integrity in two different settings: traditional and modern era, and the will of making a change. He explained in an interview that he wished to send a message about the lives of painters through bald-head figures. The bald headed traditional Chinese men are viewed as dumb or stupid. Through these figures, he is sending a message about morality and how people define what is normal based on physical appearance, rather than internal moral character. Fang Lijun values the individual stories of each person. He is asking the society to look at painters as normal people, as people who are making a change, rather than as eccentric outcasts.
In his paintings, he also uses elements of water and flower a lot. Water plays a big role in Fang Lijun's paintings. In an interview, he explained that water is helping him convey a message about his feeling and his voice about the truth and what is going in Chinese society. His famous work with water is a man being drowned in water. Part of the reason for this painting relates to his childhood experience when he was almost drowned. The second and most important part in relation to this painting is that he is expressing his feelings about the Chinese society. When the man is drowning in the water, it represents painters like Fang Lijun. He feels like he does not have a voice, that he is powerless in this societal structure and that he cannot even make his own decision or speak the truth. Also, his hope is to freely go and move in the water metaphorically. He is hoping to be able to speak for himself, for other artists and to inspire everyone.
He is one of the artists who is standing in the middle line between traditional and modern practice. For example, he still follows the process of the carving of wood with the negative image, coats it with ink and then impresses the image on the paper. Because art projects require different color immersion, Fang uses different plates and a set order of printing on different adjoined scrolls. Each scroll represents one individual against the mass which leads to "personal probity" in facing adversity.
The earliest exhibition about the Cynical Realism was by Fang Lijun and Liu Wei. "Wanshi"-Cynical Realism'. The figures in Cynical Realism's paintings were cynical, distorted and accidental. In each of these painting, there is a sense of "self - mockery and ridiculous snippets of the surrounding circumstances". Different metaphysical questions and searches were discarded by this Cynical Realism. Fang Lijun said: "The bastard can be duped a hundred times but he still falls for the same old trick. We'd rather be called losers , bores, basket cases, scoundrels, or airheads, than ever be cheated again".
Fang Lijun is famous with his "illustrative style and bald-headed" figures. In these paintings, bald headed young men are in different motions: yawning, smiling, swimming, etc. Some of the figures are described as confusion or considered "dumbfounded by modern society". His figures represent the loss in direction of youths in China after 1989. Further more, some critics view these figures as inward looking monks which challenge the idea of orthodoxy. He has repeated painting stereotypical bald headed Chinese men with a "stupid" smiles. There was a shift in his painting before the 1990s and after the 1990s. Before, the relationship between the figures was easy to predict. The background was clearer with different details to help the "picture-reader" understand the paintings. However, after the 1990s, there was a big shift in the way he portrayed these figures. The relationship is hard to interpret when there usually was a big figure in the front and other small figures in the back. The background was not the main focus of the painting, but it still played a role. This shift leads to a new way of interpreting painting and allows everybody to read and challenge the idea of "representation" . For some people this shift is considered a self-mockery and dealt with at a distance.

More...