Shen Fan (Chinese: 申凡; born 1952) is a Chinese

contemporary artist Contemporary art is a term used to describe the art of today, generally referring to art produced from the 1970s onwards. Contemporary artists work in a globally influenced, culturally diverse, and technologically advancing world. Their art i ...

currently based in

Shanghai Shanghai, Shanghainese: , Standard Chinese pronunciation: is a direct-administered municipality and the most populous urban area in China. The city is located on the Chinese shoreline on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the ...

. He creates work of temperament of the classical Chinese literati arts with intuition.

Early life

Shen Fan’s childhood years were spent in the countryside. Around the age of ten, he went to Shanghai for study and finished elementary school and middle school. For the following six years, Shen did farm work in the countryside, planting all sorts of corps, and he would practice

painting Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...

and

calligraphy Calligraphy () is a visual art related to writing. It is the design and execution of lettering with a pen, ink brush, or other writing instruments. Contemporary calligraphic practice can be defined as "the art of giving form to signs in an e ...

by himself when he was not working. At the end of six years, he went back to Shanghai, where he became a product designer.

Career

While Shen Fan graduated from the Fine Arts Department of the Shanghai Light Industry Institute (now: Shanghai Institute of Technology) In 1986, the artist began to work in abstract painting around 1982, using such materials as Chinese ink, watercolor and oil paint. With the

reform and opening-up Reform and opening-up ( zh, s=改革开放, p=Gǎigé kāifàng), also known as the Chinese economic reform or Chinese economic miracle, refers to a variety of economic reforms termed socialism with Chinese characteristics and socialist market ...

policies initiated by

Deng Xiaoping Deng Xiaoping also Romanization of Chinese, romanised as Teng Hsiao-p'ing; born Xiansheng (). (22 August 190419 February 1997) was a Chinese statesman, revolutionary, and political theorist who served as the paramount leader of the People's R ...

, the art scene in China underwent a profound change as the sudden availability of Western art publications prompted many artists to adopt the Western style, including

abstraction Abstraction is a process where general rules and concepts are derived from the use and classifying of specific examples, literal (reality, real or Abstract and concrete, concrete) signifiers, first principles, or other methods. "An abstraction" ...

, as a new mode of art creation. Rooting his work in

Eastern philosophy Eastern philosophy (also called Asian philosophy or Oriental philosophy) includes the various philosophies that originated in East and South Asia, including Chinese philosophy, Japanese philosophy, Korean philosophy, and Vietnamese philoso ...

in his pursuit of modernity, Shen represents the rich tradition of abstraction in Shanghai as one of its most important and pioneering figures in the art world.

Style

Shen Fan began disassembling concrete forms and space in painting in the 80s, and started creating abstract painting works. Since the late 1990s, Shen Fan has endeavored to bring Chinese painting elements into a wide variety of mediums and materials including

ceramics A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant, and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porce ...

, neon light, metal, and music, expanding the boundaries between traditional and new media. He is one of the earlier Chinese artists who amalgamate classical aesthetics into the contemporary context to explore contemporary Chinese cultural expressions. Shen Fan’s works are composed of various series with distinctive features, and ever-evolving materials, while maintaining the temperament of the classical Chinese literati arts. His installation works of 2006 go back to

Huang Binhong Huáng Bīnhóng (; January 27, 1865– March 25, 1955) was a Chinese literati painter and art historian born in Jinhua, Zhejiang province. His ancestral home was She County, Anhui province.Cihai: Page 2056. He was the grandson of artist Hua ...

period and re-analyse the use of space and brush strokes of classical Chinese landscape paintings. Through interactions among vision, touch, text and so on, Shen Fan provides an integrated way of viewing, which embodies his shifted and more wholesome viewing logic.

Selected solo exhibitions

* 1988 ''Shen Fan's Works on Paper'', Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai, China * 1997 ''Shen Fan'', Consulate General of France, Shanghai, China * 2008 ''I have Been Here'', Usher Gallery; The Collection of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK * 2017 ''Shen Fan: Punctuation - The Second Time'', The Barn Contemporary Art Space, Shenzhen, China

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Shen, Fan Date of birth missing (living people) Living people 1952 births 20th-century Chinese male artists 20th-century Chinese painters 21st-century Chinese male artists 21st-century Chinese painters Chinese abstract painters Chinese contemporary artists Chinese male painters Contemporary painters Painters from Shanghai Watercolorists