LI Fan

Li Fan and His Paintings

Li Fan has started to paint on paper since 2001. His paper painting series are centered on the subject of “sex”, using various materials such as gouache and acrylic paint. His experimental approach with such a great span in material is neither a simple game between materials and paper, nor an effort towards the so-called “marginalization” art form. Instead, speaking from the perspective of the subject and visual language employed, it can be regarded not only as a rebellion against the art tradition which pays more attention to the social norms rather than the passion which has inspired the art works at the first place , but also as a personal liberation from all the prohibited.

Li Fan’s earlier print works described the realistic life. In these works, Li Fan proved to be an excellent master of complicated environments and group of spaces, and showed an extraordinary acumen and exquisiteness in observing and describing the realistic life. The first phase of his transforming from print works to paper paintings took 8 years. Most paintings in the solo exhibition were created during the second phase of his transformation, which lasted for about 6 years. In these paintings, he incorporated the typical visual characteristics often seen in the mass media into his subjective recording of the secret individual spaces. These works take segments of drastic and exaggerating postures, and employ various techniques of traditional Chinese paintings, such as patch-up, ink diffusion and margin leaving. The artist paints oil on hemp paper, creating an ink-like abstract effect, which echoes with Chinese traditional art forms, but at the same time goes beyond to create a sense of modernity. In unconventionally large dimensions, erotic and prankish art forms contradict with serious subjects. In mastering the conceptual topics like “emotion” and “taboo”, the artist demonstrates his distinctive way of thinking, delivering and interpreting of the reality. More recently, Li Fan has embarked on the third phase of his transformation, which is the oil on canvas. In the future, he will try to use other media like sculpture and video as the carrier of his self-expression. These series of transformation share one objective – “To say what you really want to say in a more direct way ever”.

China is now in an era of unprecedented transformation. But the ultimate bearers of the dramatic transformation are those individual bodies regardless of their political, cultural and social background. In Li Fan’s works, these individual bodies are materialized into the “consumption goods” of urban life. Their emotions and postures in private are different from the millennium carnival or the simple hedonism. They go beyond surface and become the “reactant” of the naturality and sociality. Fundamentally, “sex” is one of the characteristics of people’s innermost life. The reason why people have stayed focused on surface lies in that “sex” constantly leads us to the extrinsic, to our body. Thus people’s experiences of “sex” remain superficial. But if people insist consciously in digging into this endlessly changing realm, or one’s inner possibility, then what we are seeking is indeed the true humanity and the essence of life.

Li Fan has extended the concept of “sex” to a variety of concepts, including character, humanity, attribute, congeniality, isomerism, multilateralism, representation, and creativity and etc. (In Chinese, all these words include the Chinese character which literally means “sex”.) “Assuming that we are unable to clarify all the confusing things in a broad sense, I am more willing to investigate, discover, and clarify myself through my recent art works, and try to unchain myself. It is a process of self-salvation, and self-enlightenment as well.” He further emphasized that one’s inner life can not be limited. He chooses the shameful human’s body parts as the starting point of his thinking, because in a way, it’s where the human being’s originate from. Therefore, human liberate themselves in his works, rather than betray themselves.,

“I have been focusing on ‘human’ in the past and in the present, since all the symbols of social development are realized through ‘human’. The accumulation of personal state of all ‘humans’ can demonstrate the overall state of society”, said Li Fan. It is this kind of humanism that have kept him restituting and enlarging the reality, and peering into and investigating one’s inner world. All his works bear a name with double meaning. Only when we really understand it, we can discover and communicate with each other, we can approximate to truth step by step.