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Fist Power

Works by Zhao Fang

Vernissage: 14 September 2006,   6:30pm - 8:00pm
Exhibition Continues: 15 September 2006 - 11 October 2006

Main Gallery, 21-31 Old Bailey Street, Central, Hong Kong

Schoeni Art Gallery is delighted to announce the debut exhibition of our newest artist, Zhao Fang, entitled Fist Power. Since Zhao Fang's graduation from the Jilin Academy of Fine Arts, China in 1997, his works have met with accolades and popular acclaim, not least for his obvious mastery over his medium, but also for his admirable anti-violence stance. Zhao Fang paints with the vocabulary of classical renaissance style, achieving incredible depth of form and movement in human anatomy by poising his subjects in a moment of torsion, receding into and reaching out of the canvas through light and shadow. By capturing motion through his subject's anatomy, Zhao Fang's use of foreshortening imbues form and function into his composition, and captures the humanity of his vision. It is through this technical finesse that Zhao Fang can transform the muscular physique of his subjects into a delicate form, suggesting through his progression through dramatic stills, imminent injury and what this entails in terms of life, and death. Zhao Fang develops this dynamic motion of thought by presenting his work in diptychs, and indeed triptychs, achieving a notion of reciprocation; cause and effect are central ideas that Zhao Fang focuses on. By showing that humans respond to and exist in a world governed by physics, Zhao Fang allows his subject matter to be caught in a moment where every action, has in fact an equal and opposite reaction; pull is juxtaposed with push; throwing from behind is shown in conjunction with shooting ahead, or in fact, a head. Wit and metaphor are used to great effect in this manner, and Zhao Fang is well aware of the implications of his work, suggesting the interdigitation of our humanity, by literally interlocking fingers as they ply apart and fumble together in a series of emotionally charged pieces. Hinging his understanding of our physical mortality as humans on how we relate to and touch each other, Zhao Fang illuminates his oeuvre with the vitality of feeling and the communal physicality that we share, thus heightening the spiritual resonance of the sensual tangibility that we experience within our corporeal bodies.

Having accomplished so much already at the age of 34, in terms of his technique and distinctive vision, we are proud to bare witness to Zhao Fang's development as an emerging talent. This is a show not to be missed.

Written by Alexandra Hamlyn

A catalogue was published in conjunction with the exhibition. Please click here for more details.
For information on Zhao Fang's second solo, Fist Power II, please click here.