Feng Zhengjie - Contemporary Art London Thursday, June 21, 2007 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Private collection, New York

  • Catalogue Essay

    Feng Zhengjie was born in 1968 in the province of Sichuan and received his Masters in Fine Art from the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts. He lives and works in Beijing today. The artist’s most renowned series is Chinese Portraits, a glamorous yet acerbic commentary on the state of desire, fashion, and commercialism in contemporary China. On the one hand his sensational beauties, who often appear larger than life, are creatures of fantasy and science fiction; on the other, their airbrushed, Pop coloring and vacant stares are directly derived from representations of beauty in today’s media.

    The two main features marking the pieces by Feng Zhengjie are the subjects—mainly beautiful women—and the shocking colors. The chromatic choice originates directly from Gaudy Art, which accentuates the bright tones of Western-derived Pop Art. Instead, the female faces play on the contrast between cold dehumanization and disturbing sensuality. The former is created by an empty unreal gaze and the latter by the softness and roundless of lines that—highly unlikely in nature—give a convincing example of aesthetic perfection that is however only possible through pictorial creation.

    -E. Battiston, “New Perspectives in Chinese Painting,” China: Contemporary Painting, ed. L. de Bianchi, Italy, 2005, p. 16

79

Chinese Portrait - G Series No. 18

2006
Oil on canvas.
59 1/8 x 59 1/8 in. (150.2 x 150.2 cm).
Signed and dated "Feng Zhengjie [in Chinese and English] 2006" lower right.

Estimate
£10,000 - 15,000 

Sold for £45,600

Contemporary Art

22 June 2007, 4pm & 5pm
London