Feng Zhengjie’s art suggests a new category of imagery that appears to speak in the language of kitsch, yet it is able to subvert both high art and popular culture, by the peculiar juxtaposition of imageries, icons and symbols, that are seemingly familiar and yet perturbing. The term “kitsch,” of Germanic origin , often refers to artistic creations that are pretentious or lacking depth, as in popular imagery appealing to sensation through gaudiness and vulgarity. In the earlier, mid-20th century discussion on kitsch, the influential American art critic Clement Greenberg noted that kitsch was a product of the industrial revolution which urbanized the masses of Western Europe and America and established what is called universal literacy. Invoking Kantian aesthetics and arguing for the worth of art in its own terms – art as the subject matter of art – Greenberg spoke of it as an avant-garde position an artist could take vis-à-vis his/her social context, the empty collective of which would be represented by kitsch on the other end of the spectrum. Kitsch subsequently took on the meaning of widely circulated imagery of popular culture and consumer society, as well as images that serve agenda of propaganda in the political realm.

　　If we extend the opt-cited lines on kitsch in Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, we might yet see a new mode of image making within the language of kitsch that speaks somewhat the language of the contemporary media world. This mode of image making that is concurrently effectual as a personal voice may not be one of freedom but one of entrapment, yet it is one that may yet be of meaningful contemporary discursive significance.

　　Kundera’s lines on kitsch in The Unbearable Lightness of Being are precise, taking kitsch to the level of human consciousness, the association of imagery with self-righteousness, and self-proclaimed representation of the collective. This is in contrast to the title of book which indicates a lingering response, whether of mental or emotive. Feng’s “kitsch” is also unbearable, so to speak, as it lingers on in you, holding you torn between appetite and withdrawal. Feng Zhengjie’s work appears to speak in a language of kitsch and popular culture, immersed in that somewhat familiar emerald green and rose pink. Yet, there is something deeply engaging if not perturbing about these images.

　　“When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object,” Kundera notes, “in the realm of kitsch, the dictatorship of the heart reigns supreme; the feeling induced by kitsch must be a kind the multitudes can share… it must derive from the basic images people have engraved in their memories… the brotherhood of man on earth will be possible only on a base of kitsch.”

　　The objection to kitsch here is its falsity in indicating an empty collectivity. In Feng’s paintings, however, the “brotherhood” or a shared penchant for the language of kitsch becomes the very basis of subversion, of elitist art and of popular imagery. Feng has turned kitsch on its back, to prompt viewers into exploration of what may lie beneath the very flatness and starkness of the billboard-like images. These are images that appear to be of the realm of the collective, and yet they invite reflexive ownership by the individual. The images may not be ignored. At the same time, the images may not be discarded.

　　Are Feng’s works sentimental? Other than the falsity of collectivity another key objection to kitsch is that tendency in art towards expression or induction of soft sentimentality. This is a value disparaged in both Chinese and Western aesthetic traditions, as institutionalized in early Chinese painting treatise such as the 9th century Lidai minghuaji compiled by Zhang Yanyuan. “Sweetness” was dejected, just as Kant noted that one should not be governed by inclinations and feelings, but to be able to take a conscious decision as to where sentimentality may lead us. “Sweetness” in Chinese aesthetic perspective appears to suggest the same basic level of stock or soft sentimentality, as in the popular imagery of kitsch, that is often mistaken as expression of the collective.

　　For Feng however, in working through the trajectories of academic realism, literati aesthetics and the 20th century transformations of folk imagery through the channels of social dissemination and changes in print media, he crystallizes a painted visual language which may not be categorized in any of the prevailing mode of image making. This new painted language is of neither high nor popular art. Yet it takes a personal risk in getting very close to kitsch so as to effectively subvert it, yielding a powerful emotive and critical intensity through his unique images with the kind of push and pull in a viewer which can be best described as an activity that is unbearable. And this is a feeling that is omnipresent in the realities of contemporary society.

　　In Feng’s earlier works, juxtaposition of folk motifs and symbols, the at times written characters and the naturalistic renditions of persons in different poses in various activities, collectively create a picture of a media world imbued with traditional symbolisms and contemporary contradictions. The viewer may conjecture the psyche of the depicted humans as one of bewilderment and lost. The recent works of large portraits, such as the Chinese Portrait 2007 series that cover full canvases, accentuate this emptiness. Because this very contradiction of a concealed subjectivity embedded under a seemingly thin layer of smooth and flat surface, and alongside a non-particularized and emotionless face, the very intensity of a concealed subjectivity is ironically, suggested.

　　Kitsch is a relative concept. This is also observed by Tomas Kulka in his book entitled Kitsch and Art. Kulka noted that to understand the phenomenon of kitsch required a psychological, sociological, historical, or anthropological analysis rather than an aesthetic one. The foremost Chinese critic Li Xianting coined the term “gaudy art” to designate a trend in Chinese contemporary art since the mid-1990s which captured symbols of this consumerism in gaudy or garish colours as a social commentary. Li has further noted that this was an upshot that came in the long line of the popularization of culture with impetuses found in the late Qing through the May Fourth Movement period. The issue of high and popular art in the Chinese context has a history of its own, and has seen different alignments and transformations in the 20th century and the current era. The course of trajectories in folk and vernacular art and literature is likewise, along with the rapid changes in the media environment, and certainly the dramatic transformations from Cultural Revolution to market economy.

　　Feng’s women portraits further remind me of one other passage in Kundera’s Unbearable Lightness of Being, concerning a discussion on lyrical and epic. Here Kundera describes two kinds of womanizing attitude of men. These attitudes should probably apply generically to all relations between subjects and others/materials. A “lyrical” obsession is one that perpetually seeks an “ideal” (woman), which by the definition of “ideal” is one that would never be found. The obsessed is thus disappointed again and again. An “epic” attitude is one that does not project any subjective ideal (on women), and “since everything interests him, nothing can disappoint him; this inability to be disappointed has something scandalous about it… in pursuit of knowledge, epic womanizers turn away from conventional feminine beauty, of which they quickly tire, and inevitably end up as curiosity collectors.”

　　In Feng’s women portraits, the kind of lyricism highlighted by Kundera may be found in the tension between the seemingly perfection of the glaze and smoothness of the canvas and facial features depicted, and yet, the psychological intensity of the ruination that is deeply felt, recollects an ideal that can never be achieved, despite the painting’s luring reminder of a seeming perfection. An “epic” attitude is indeed needed, in recognition of each portrait as that of an individual, but because of the kitsch-like language, they are about uniformity, about surfaces, one is thus left to mourn the lost of the individual in contemporary society.

　　The very tensions of high art and kitsch, of popular culture and the individual, of lyrical and epic, underscore the work of Feng Zhengjie in the way such fundamental contradictions of our psychological and cultural being is constructed. Hence, the title of this exhibition – ben se, or primary colours. The Chinese and English titles take on slightly different meaning, but only in terms of semantic intensity. Ben indicates “primary”, “nature”, natural” and “self and has a strong accentuation of humanity (ren ben) and individuality (ben ren). Ben se also has the meaning of “true colour” as in the term ying xiong ben se, or “true colours of a hero”. As mentioned in the chapter in Wenxin diaolong on “Legacies and Innovations”: “The blue dye comes from the indigo plant and crimson dye from the madder; while the colours of these derivatives outdo the primary colours (ben se) of their sources, they do not lend themselves to further development.”

　　Se refers to colours, characteristics, and of special relevance to this exhibition, looks (zi se). The title of the exhibition is an attempt to capture the characteristics of Feng Zhengjie’s work in the heroic attempt at high art from the border of kitsch, and by doing so, brilliantly reveals the mental and emotional complexity and tensions of an individual in the world of media, superficiality and impossibility of idealization.