Fang Lijun was a child during the Cultural Revolution-a time when members of his own family were denounced for being from ‘the wrong class’. His grandfather was condemned as ‘Landlord Fang’, and his father demoted from his skilled position in the railways. Fang Lijun learned to survive at an early age during this period of social upheaval by realising that, at school, if ‘I behaved in a particular way I’d be commended’, even though this was the exact opposite of his true feelings.

　　In later years, the artist because a prominent figure in the so-called ‘Cynical Realism’ movement in contemporary Chinese art, Which stemmed from the earlier ‘Grey Humour’ art of the mid-1980s-in which unrealistic facial expressions were applied in a realistic style. The result was quite incongruous. Fang Lijun’s own work shows realistically rendered figures depicted with exaggerate facial expressions or gestures.

　　The unreality of this suggests a great sense of displacement in the world-bringing a wry smile to the viewer. 1996/18 shows a male figure, who lacks any identification by name — rather the figure is merely given a number within a sequence in the year. The man is shown with a shaven head, characterless and in nondescript clothing — he is a Chinese Everyman. His facial expression — the wide-open mouth, yawning or quierly screaming — displays a sense of boredom, despondency or malaise.

　　This demeanour represents the antithesis of traditional Chinese art or Maoist ideas on art. It suggests, instead, a sense of helplessness within society. The image in worthy of Edvard Munch’s The scream. Unlike the subject of the composition, however, Fang Lijun’s figure does not appear to be experiencing any powerful human emotion but only boredom.

　　The monumental scale of the composition is appropriate to contentious subject. The artist delights in the crude rendering of form and the rough gouging of line reminiscent of Expressionist techniques of another era. The work also have traditional Chinese elements the three colours are printed on oriental paper mounted as a Chinese wall hanging use a simple cream brocade.