Author: LIU FENGZHI 刘锋植

Size: 200×300cm

Signed and dated: Painted in 2008

Estimate:

Final Price: RMB 820,000

LITERATURE
2011 Gwangju！ Beijing！, Beijing！ Gwangju！
2013 Palace of Art / P71
signed in Chinese, dated 2008
EXHIBITED
2011 Gwangju！Beijing！，Beijing！Gwangju！- Gwangju Korea and Beijing China International Exchange Exhibition, A+A+ Art Center, Beijing

Liu Fengzhi is hailed as an unrecognized talented painter in the Chinese art circles. As an old-timer during the Old Summer Palace period, he was always involved in important nodes of Chinese contemporary art. In the 1990s, Liu Fengzhi participated in the “China’s Avant-Garde Art Exhibition” in Hong Kong, the “First Exhibition of Chinese Contemporary Art” of the National Art Museum of China, and the “China’s Exhibition” held in Bonn, Germany in the same percoid. Despite the occasional changes in style, his works have always maintained authenticity and freedom.
Liu Fengzhi is best known for his “Tiananmen” series of works. Around 1995, the artist completed the first group of “Tiananmen series” of works. Thereafter, this theme recurred in his paintings. I am enamored with this theme because Tiananmen Square is a “monument” of symbolic significance, and also a “broadcasting studio” and “catwalk” that showcases a country, as well as its modern thoughts and future intention, as if a kind of password to be cracked.
This Abstracted Reality was created in 2008. The “bullet kite” at the top of the picture is enormous, like a roaring wounded giant. The kite is connected by a thin, winding line. On this line is an image resembling a palm or a glove. One end of the line is held by a cartoon character. Above the cartoon character is the image of Flower of Evil by Liu Fengzhi, and below is a soft plane, like an object in a dream. As Cézanne put it, “I Will Astonish Paris with an Apple!” Liu Fengzhi, who admires Franz Kafka, endeavors to find a way out for himself in the castle. “Kite” is the guide of his dream, and a guide for passing through the past and walking towards the future.
In terms of the use of color, he boldly applies flat-painted saturated colors, and uses black to maintain the relationship of colors in the picture, and also bring the lines into focus. In today’s society ruled by commercialization, materialization, secularization and vulgarization, the poetic movement and tragic scrutiny without a doubt have a kind of elegant rebellion. This is Liu Fengzhi’s view on culture, who views our world from the negative side of the times.