(Beijing)

　　1963 born in Handan, Hebei Province

　　1989 graduates from the central Academy of visual Art, Beijing, subject area . graphic printing

　　My art deals with the human being , I want to tell stories about the types in my pictures , I’m concerned with the disputes humans have on which I as an artist also very much depend , AS an artist one is just as much dependent on society as anyone else One also lives like everyone else. Naturally I want to enjoy life go walking with my dogs, earn a ot of money, paint beautiful pictures and become famous.

　　— Fang Lijun

　　One always dispenses with people before they have achieved something, before they are successful, we are not used to thinking so independently; it is still unusual. Art is important here.

　　When Fang Lijun began to paint his bold-headed figures, Which very much resemble a grotesque, self-portrait, he caught the attention of the visitors of the Yuanmingyuan village in the out skirts of Beijing. He often repeated the same dull expressions and gestures in one single work, using them as a sort of pattern without depth, A blue sky, just as blue as the water that now lovers the childish faces which appear in the most recent works, is the fixed background, that immerses he figures in an immutable, almost biblical atmosphere, Fang likes to play with composition, and perspective. as well: he sometimes juxtaposes enormous heads in the foreground, with the repetition of enigmatic, minute, identical figures in the distance, creating a feeling of extreme surrealism and suspended tension.

　　The artist likes to contrast, the smooth surfaces of the skin shadows which do not really give a feeling of depth, but rather seem to display a pure pictorial pleasure. Following this study of refined pictorial effects, and naturally distorts the proportions and the expressions, After having painted the basic self-portraits (and portraits of females with large, inelegant bodies ), bathing in grayish water, freeing their limbs in the most unexpected of gestures, Fang switches surface is moved by human bodies swimming in it. Small waves allow rich–but not photorealistic-pictorial effects.

　　The works featured in the present catalogue present a new variation, which combines the “water” series with the previous self-portraits, Here the childish human faces smile unnaturally beneath the surface of the water, reminiscent of ghosts or to nightmare apparitions which torture one’s imagination. Fang Lijun’s apparently light hearted humour conceals a rather nihilistic of life.

作者：Monica,Demattè