Chinese palette

According to curator Danilo Eccher, current director of Galleria Civica d'Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Turin, Fang's art expresses a cautionary vision of the structural intricacies of reality, so it demands to be analyzed and interpreted in the context of complex theory, which interconnects with chaos theory, complex algorithms and quantum physics.

His art is imbued with the Eastern metaphorical visual tradition.

Old nation's new Transfiguration

"It enshrines all the secrets of the East," Eccher says. "A sweet, simple figurative style enveloped in a brilliant use of color; a visionary, childlike fascination with an unattainable world; and a calm, graceful, balanced narrative. But all of this is just the brilliant patina of a style of painting that is able to suggest the contemporary anguish of loss of identity, the obsession of the collective, the presence of disease, pain, sin.

"Fang Lijun does not simply dramatize contradiction; rather than limit himself to the astonishing effect of opposition, his cynical realism is in reality a narrative about complexity, about the art of chaos that refutes linear interpretation, and that is immersed in an engorgement of languages and meanings."

Having innate insights into the popular knowledge of his national heritage, Fang is an epic storyteller whose art derives from a sensitive observance of the vast reality of his native China.

Eccher considers Fang one of the most innovative of today's painters.

"His figurative paintings, so purely Chinese, are at the virtuoso level both in technique and precision, especially regarding his passion, so typically Chinese, for details."

Interest in contemporary Chinese art has grown enormously over the past 20 years.

The International Art Venice Biennale first presented artists from the Chinese mainland exactly 20 years ago.

"After the pioneering phase of great enthusiasm and curiosity, which started in the early '90s, about 10 years ago we moved on to a second phase, entirely focused on investigation, a more accurate study and critical analysis," Eccher says.