ShanghART Gallery is pleased to present SHEN Fan’s solo exhibition: Punctuation – The First Time, from May 10th to June 14th 2015. The exhibition will be showing his latest mixed-material paintings and installations.
SHEN Fan is one of the artists in China doing abstract painting in the early days. His work mainly features non-subjective duplicate elements and monochrome. Affected by western painting style, his work tended to involve certain trends and tension. In late 1990s, the tensions in his paintings gradually disappeared, but a painting language, which harmonises with early decorative art, and the nature of painting that possesses Chinese aesthetics started to be unveiled. Stone rubbing technique during SHEN’s creation process helps to restrain the strong emotional fluctuation by orders and steadiness, which generates moderate introspect and exposure in his work.
This exhibition will be showing SHEN’s latest creation during 2014-2015. After removing the characters, it resembles the Morse code, illustrating a sense of continuation and extension of abstraction. And the rhythm caused by the remaining punctuations is constrained by serene statements, protesting the authority of characters. SHEN Fan manages to challenge audience’s way of appreciation by a new language. Covering the original characters and abandoning all the potentials of understanding and misunderstanding, he chooses to bring a broader subject.
Shen Fan, born in 1952, works and lives in Shanghai. His work has been collected by The National Art Museum of China, M+ Collection, and Shanghai Art Museum and so forth. Shen’s recent solo exhibition include: SHEN Fan: Black & White Confusion (2014), ShanghART Beijing, Beijing; Landscape 9210 – SHEN Fan Solo Exhibition (2012), ShanghART H-Space, Shanghai. And the main group exhibitions include: A Fragment in the Course of Time, Landscape of Chinese Ink Art in 1980s (2014), Himalayas Art Museum, Shanghai; Images and Words: Since Magritte Era (2012), The National Art Museum of China, Beijing; In Time-2012 Chinese Oil Painting Biennale (2012), National Art Museum, Beijing; Shanghai (2010), Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, U.S.A.; Hyper Design (2006), the 6th Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai Art Museum, Shanghai.
