FENG ZHENGJIE

(Born in 1968 in Sichuan province, China)

Feng Zhengjieis an artist based in Beijing and Jeju Island of South Korea. Originally a high-school and college art teacher in Sichuan, he came to Beijing in 1995.

1988 – 1992 Fine Arts Education Dept of Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, BFA

1992 – 1995 Oil Painting Dept of Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts, MFA

He is one of the brightest rising stars of Chinese contemporary art started his career with the first series of work “Anatomy” around 1992 while he was still a student in Sichuan Fine Art Institute. The reality of today’s Chinese society, the conflicts of traditional and modern mindsets, and the fast-paced economic growth with its associated material needs from the mass has been the central topic throughout the artist’s various bodies of work. “My works are primarily focused on the massive consuming culture and the effects of a fast changing society on its people’s looks and minds. When I was in school, we were very traditional, the education was conservative, being adopted from the Soviet methodology. In the meantime, however, there were massive changes outside the school. There was popular music from Hong Kong and Taiwan blasting on the street, everywhere was covered with posters of superstars; this sort of things baffled me. Deep down I was trying to think about profundity but my youth was attracted to popular culture, I was struggling and puzzled because I couldn’t resist it. I wanted to enjoy it but I knew it was shallow and of no importance, a waste of time. My portrait series also contain a significant amount of perplexity, at the beginning I wanted to express the consequences upon individuals as a result of expedited growing society, these effects and influences come from the capitalisation within China. The façade of the subject in the portraits are very international, but is the inside of the subject also international? I feel dubious about it. A lot of people ask me why the eyes of the subject look as if they lack engagement, absent-minded and unable to concentrate; when I was creating the portraits, I didn’t think of any of these words but all these statements are included and inclined to show how we feel: on one hand, we are looking around to discover and are tempted; on the other, we are hazy and intimidated by the wide range of options that we can choose from”.

(Feng Zhengjie, “In Artists’ Eyes,” China Securities Journal, December 2008, translated from Chinese).