Fang Lijun
Ambiguous in nature, Fang's works have often been viewed as expressing a feeling of disillusionment associated with the years immediately after 1989.
Born in 1963 in Handan, North China's Hebei Province, Fang Lijun had cemented his name in the art world as a leading artist in the Chinese artistic movement entitled "Cynical Realism" by the 1990s. One of the dominant styles that developed just after the Tiananmen protests, Cynical Realism was seen to typify the pervasive feeling of disillusionment after 1989, with its use of humor and irony.
Caught in the midst of this chaotic milieu, urban artists such as Fang produced works that were seen as reflecting the nation's burgeoning feelings of skepticism. With his trademark bald-headed youthful subjects, Fang's paintings were seen to illustrate the Cynical Realist notion of lost idealism, and a more realistic yet ironic view of changing Chinese society.
In one of Fang's better known images, "Untitled," from 1992, a lone man stands in the foreground, either yawning or yelling as three figures stand in the background, identical in their blank expressions. Marking the clash between the old and the new, it shows a disjuncture between the complacency of conformity and a yearning for individuality, marking just some of the prevailing conflicts and desires of the time. And yet, the meaning is not particularly clear. Focusing on facial expressions that communicated a multitude of emotions, Fang purposely created scenes with enigmatic narratives.
Email to Friends
Print
Save