Daily Art Fixx

visual arts blog, painting, drawing, sculpture, illustration and more!

Victor Wang: Painting

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Born and raised in northern China,  Victor Wang is currently a professor of fine arts at Fontbonne University in St. Louis, Missouri.  Wang has a BFA (oil painting) from the Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts in China and an MFA from Fontbonne University where he works.

Of his painting, Wang says, “My path through life has been adventurous, exciting, and dream-like. My experience of settling into America in search of better opportunities has been both challenging and inspiring. I use the human face as a vehicle to paint human experiences – worry and wonder, sadness and pleasure – which reflect the emotional stage directly tied to my immigration experiences.

China’s Cultural Revolution played an important part in my life. During that time, sunflowers were used as political allegories to depict how citizens of China should follow Mao who represented the sun, since sunflowers follow the sun’s movements. People eventually inferred the deception that this symbol masked. After graduating from high school, I was sent to a labor camp in the country for ‘reeducation’ during China’s Cultural Revolution. There, I was subject to grueling farm work. Often, I worked in corn and sunflower fields from sunrise to sunset. Thus, for me, sunflowers evoke both personal joy and sadness. Therefore, to deliver my complex feelings, I use sunflowers as a metaphor to connote my background and emotional stage.  My incorporation of collages of figures from China’s Tang Dynasty represents my Chinese heritage and is a constant reminder of where I came from. The texture and earthiness on the canvas’s surface are inspired by the texture of the soil on the farm where I worked in China.”

To see more of Wang’s work, visit VictorWang.net.

Zhang Linhai: Painting

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Zhang-Linhai

Born in Shanghai in 1963, Zhang Linhai was adopted from a Shanghai orphanage and at a young boy, witnessed the devastation of the Cultural Revolution.  As a child, Linhai suffered from various illnesses, including polio, and at the age of four was left with a crippled leg and hand. Despite his challenges, at the age of 17,  Linhai developed an interest in painting and completed a degree in engraving from the Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts in 1990.

Zhang’s style is easily recognized by his signature depiction of bald young boys wandering through, or flying over, an arid wasteland or countryside village. The scenes articulate feelings of sadness, fear, a need for escape, stark shock or even bemusement.  Linhai’s works are shaped by the artist’s past struggles the repeated arrangements of his motif display a touch of sadness on top of nostalgia. (Li Xian Ting, Art Critic)

To see more, visit ArtIntern.net.

Lu Cong: Painting 2011

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The latest work from Chinese-American painter Lu Cong. Born in Shanghai in 1978, Cong immigrated to the U.S. in 1989.  After graduating from the University of Iowa with degrees in Biology and Art in 2000, Lu chose to pursue portrait art over medicine. Between 2003 and 2007, Lu was recognized by a number of art publications as a notable emerging artist.  Since then, Lu has developed a distinctive look that many has regarded as an original approach to figurative realism.  His portraits do not simply capture the physical or emotional likeness of the subject, rather they beckon to establish an authentic engagement – interaction that ensues when one comes face to face with the sensual, the inexplicable, and the unsettling.

Of his work Cong says, “My recent paintings depict young adults, at around the coming of age. I painted them in ways that I feel is most relevant to my experiences. I don’t make art with the overt intension to critique or dissent. However I am aware that what I feel to be authentic is often a reaction against what I feel isn’t. In this case, my approach to painting is in part shaped by my apathy towards the ‘intellectually respectable’ ways of painting; and in part provoked by commonplace and repetitive visuals of ‘mass media.’ My concern when painting is how real it is; not in its actual likeness, but in its immediacy and meaningfulness to myself.” (Vered Gallery)

Check out more of Cong’s work at LuCong.com.

DAL: Street Art

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The “academic sculptor” DAL has been dedicated to Urban Art since 2004. He is inspired by the way the material world revolves, how the spiritual world unfolds,  life’s emotions and the infinite space around us.  He uses a variety of mediums, methods, disciplines and spaces to create his works.

At a first glance, some of his work on walls appear to be painted: giant creatures and parasites in a wire garment jump out of the wall. Only after a second look does one see the entwined sculpture.

DAL is participating in CitiLeaks Urban Art Festival in Cologne, Germany, September 5 – 25, 2011.  See more of DAL’s work at DALeast.com.

Qiu Jiongjiong: Painting

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“Chinese painter Qiu Jiongjiong’s experiences growing up have made him something of an eccentric in the art community: he began painting at age two, at three he began performing local opera (his grandfather was a famous Sichuanese Opera performer). He established his dream of being an artist when he was young, then at 18 years old, he resigned school to devote himself full-time to art.

Abundant experience in the “school of life” have given Qiu Jiongjiong’s works a depth that is unusual for artists of his age. Some of his most favored subjects include portraits and, oddly, cured meats. In his portraits, we see the faintly discernable shape of a jocular face peers out from a layered and mottled canvas. He has completely abandoned average portraiture techniques in favor of slightly exaggerated deformations and obscure brush strokes that create haziness between the subject and the viewers.” (Bio from Star Gallery)

See more of Qiu Jiongjiong’s work at Star Gallery.

Liu Di: Photography

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Born in 1985 in Shanxi Province, China, photographer Liu Di graduated from the Professional Photography Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in 2009. In 2010, the young artist won the Lacoste Elysee Prize for his series called “Animal Regulations”.

Liu’s images are composed of over-sized animals set in suburban settings like residential compounds, Hutong districts, and the scenes of demolished homes.

“My work is about the conflicting relationship between nature and human society, which is created by the phenomenal rate of Chinese urban development”  Animals represent the laws of nature, The environment they’re placed in represents the human living conditions. The animals are big because they reflect the tremendous power of nature. Some viewers will sense sadness from seeing the back of a panda, while others will interpret its stance as a reflection of society’s imbalanced development.”

For more information about Liu Di, visit Pekin Fine Arts.

Sources: Global Times, Pekin Fine Arts

Lu Cong: Painting

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liza-3-lu-cong

Born in Shanghai, China in 1978, and immigrating to the U.S. in 1989, Lu Cong is a Chinese/American portrait artist. Cong graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in Biology and Art in 2000. That same year, he moved to Denver in an “effort to delay entry to medical school.” He rented a small studio on Capital Hill and began to teach himself to paint in oils.

In 2005, Cong made Southwest Art Magazine’s annual list of twenty one artists to watch under the age of 31. In 2008 he was named as one of five “Today’s Masters Making Their Marks” by Fine Art Connoisseur magazine.

Cong is regarded by many as one of the “most distinctive young artists to recently emerge from the American West. His paintings center around the faces of his carefully chosen subjects. His style pays homage to 18th Century Romantics, yet it is unmistakably conceived in and relevant to the contemporary era.”

For more information about Lu Cong, visit LuCong.com.

Sources: Artnet