The Japan Foundation Asia Center is proud to present this exhibition entitled “Fang Lijun: Human Images in an Uncertain Age”

　　Now that China is gaining an increasing opening up of economic policies, the social conditions and values of things are also undergoing change; even in cultural fields such as the arts, movements have arisen to search for ever new modes of expression. Even in the fine arts, in the short time from the end of the 1970s to 1989, numerous experiments were conducted with various Western forms of modern art, and, recently, the overseas activities of China’s artists have become quite significant. Fang Lijun is himself representative of the new generation of Chinese painters.

　　Fang Lijun was born in 1963, Handan in Hebei province, and later went on to study at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing. Entering the 1990s, in two series of oil paintings portraying people with shaved head r swimming through iridescent water, Fang Lijun’s work stood in the spotlight of attention, especially for its accurate yet sober perspective in depicting contemporary people and their times, and his style has been termed “Cynical Realism.” On the one hand, he remains unable to extract himself from the influence of the Cultural Revolution, which he experienced as a youth, and the Tian’anmen Incident, and the social conditions of the China of those times remains as a undercurrent in his works. On the other, his art touches the hearts of wide numbers of people around the world, which shows that his work is infused, above all else, with a paramount power of delineation a very keen sense of color, and also that it depicts the true nature of space long searched for in paintings partaking modernism.

　　Thus, as the works of Fang Lijun have over the past few years attracted much attention on an international level, this exhibition is made up of 45 representative works, ranging from early drawings to the most recent works, enormous woodcut print. We hope that it will not only establish his reputation as a world artist of critical acclaim, but will also serve to elicit a response of admiration and respect for China’s fledgling contemporary arts and artists.

　　Up until now, the Asia Center has introduced the arts of Asia by concentrating on certain areas or certain themes; thus, this exhibition represents our first attempt at a one-artist show. We believe that through viewing the works of a single artist as talented as Fang Lijun, we will all come to see him as not just a “Chinese painter,” but will be enabled to study him more deeply as an individual artist, through the universality that shines so brightly in his works.

　　The Asia Center would like to express its sincere thanks and heartfelt gratitude to Mr. and Mrs. Fang Lijun for their unstinting cooperation; to all the museums, galleries, and private collections that have so generously lent us their works; and to all those whose hard work and great efforts have made this exhibition possible.

　　November 1996

　　The Japan Foundation Asia Center