Fang Lijun’s works are highly appreciated outside China where he has participant in various group shows, including the Avant-Garde Chinese Art exhibition that toured Europe in 1993 and the Sao Paulo Biennale in 1994. Fang’s technique and the sense of space he creates as well as strikingly contemporary elements in his works compared with other Chinese artists have been a surprise for foreigners. This show is the first retrospective for the 33-year-old artist and consists of 46 works, mostly paintings.

　　Fang’s works depict Asians with big heads, boldly drawn with slanted eyes and prolonged noses. In some, the same man is tripled or quadrupled (or more) with the same ambiguous facial expressions. Their narrow eyes seem to hold a wry smile; sometimes a look of uncertain distorts their faces. Or, a man opens his mouth wide as if shouting out of stress.

　　His Paintings are more easily understood when one takes into account the political and social situation in China during his youth. When Fang was 3, the Cultural Revolution occurred, and since his father was a rich famer, they had to defend themselves from various accusations. This kind of situation is very difficult to imagine for people like myself, who have never experienced such extensive ideological control and social pressure. Fang writes that he learned to conceal his feelings well in his childhood. Even his father did not know Fang’s turmoil until he read his son’s diary long afterward. In way the faces in Fang’s paintings seem to result from having to conform to the social norm and hide their personal opinions.

　　The generations of Chinese artists after the Cultural Revolution can be classified into three stages, according to Li Xiangting, and art critic from China who has been helping to introduce young Chinese artists to the outside world. The first generation of artists, now in their layer 40s and early 50s, were recruited in the Red Army. They were influenced by modernism and realism introduced by the West and reflected by their own society. The themes in their works were mainly truth and humanity.

　　The second-generation artists experienced a more liberal period and criticized their society and culture. Li says the common factor among the first and second generations is “idealism,” on which they tried to base a new culture influenced by the West. Between 1981 and 1987, until the downfall of Hu Yaobang who promoted democratization, numerous art trends flowed into China, and local artists saw the peak of Chinese contemporary art’s prosperity.

　　The third-generation artists were born in 1960s, like Fang. The Tiananmen Square incident in 1989 closed Chinese society from the outside world again, and the regime’s control was tightened. In the same year, exhibitions of all local contemporary art from the 1980s were closed by the government. Li calls the art of this generation “cynical realism.” It is lined with a sense of crisis and helplessness.

　　Fang’s paintings are realistic in a sense that they portray humans, but how they exist in space and how they hold themselves seem illusionary. The close-ups of strange smiles in Fang’s large paintings (about 2 meters in width) are unpleasant in a way, and the colors are mostly acid pink and orange against sky blue. It’s hard to say whether the use of these colors is natural for Fang or if he is trying to create something Chinese for a Western audience? Nevertheless these colors and the strange faces of men (who actually look like the artist) leave strong impressions on the viewer.

　　Since 1993, he has been painting a series of human beings floating in water. Sometimes the water is drawn in monochrome and other times painted bright blue. This color blue is, I believe, often used as a backdrop in TV commercials, especially in the United States, because research has shown that the shade makes people feel good. It seems to me that the person floating in his painting is totally free in water, and the blue body of water symbolizes freedom and spiritual healing.

　　Fang knows what it is like to live in a society where a fixed ideology or a value system must be maintained and contradicting beliefs are eliminated, People in his paintings seems to show how human beings can be changed to cope under pressure, and at the same time, how people try to find, consciously and unconsciously, their true selves.

　　“Contemporary Chinese Artist Fang Lijun – Human Images in an Uncertain Age” at the Japan Foundation forum, Akasaka Twin Tower 1F, until Dec 1, 11 a.m. – 7 p.m. Mondays closed. For international phone the Japan Foundation Asia Center.

作者：MIKI,MIYATAKE