Red lips: sometimes severe, sometimes mellow; they always appear as chunky while occupying the central position on the canvas. Lips well drawn, almost exaggerated, they seem to have their own life around which pale faces take shape. These smooth visages are nonetheless very seductive. They accompany extravagant and colorful hairstyles, almost as if electric blending of dyes. Looking at Feng Zhengjie’s latest works, lips are beyond question the most intriguing and obvious element (Picture: China 2003 No.32). It is not without a reason, because lips represent the mediation point between individuals and the world, between inside and outside, between the inner and the outer. Lips are fundamental in everybody’s lives, not only as an archaic means to reach knowledge, but also as a way to communicate, to let ourselves known, to seduce, to explain, to tell, to contradict, to lie and, in a word, to express what we want to say. For a long period, lips have been pursuing the quests of seduction and sexuality. However, at the end of our journey through life, it is actually through them that we indeed leave with the world,and with those who will come after, our last, short breath, our last word, our last smile, and us.

　　It is not by chance that the first impact with Feng Zhengjie’s works is right through the lips. Feng Zhengjie is not at all a superficial soul. Attracted by his own icons, he is constantly looking for special effects, displaying thus his very thoughtful nature, and his need to meditate on the reality he lives in. He is extremely sensitive to the spirit of his own moment and, as the greater artists of every epoch, he is a very attentive observer of society, which he analyses, sections and scans with distinguished lucidity. Analysis is then followed by the creative act. It’s the moment for the poetic intervention: it’s creation. Initially, it’s maybe something unconscious, because generated from a state of grace, from a ‘mental void’, as Suzuki would say: and we see the famous lips, often enveloped in a heart shape, rich in color, almost as a mark, a seal, but also as an aesthetic pilaster, a visual hint, crucial and unavoidable. Feng Zhengjie is aware of these metaphors, while his mastery increases as the colors on the canvas diminish, conferring thus more immediacy to the work. Paradoxically, he is able to create a sense of mystery, in which these faces become sentinels looking after the enigma represented by portraits in which to the sensuality of the lips correspond a cold feeling, the looseness and oddity of a glance that leaves the spectators with no words.

　　Feng Zhengjie’s works remind to the visitors that the world of today is seductive and alien at the same time, that a soul looking for a contact with another, falsely or generously, often with desperate loneliness, is accompanied by cynicism, by a detachment from whatever is human that is the ability of conceding ourselves to the others with generosity. Feng Zhengjie expresses this alienating and alienated condition of the contemporary society with a precision and ability, which can generate a strong impact, so as to leave the audience surprised and astonished. This message is transmitted through the mediation of female portraits and disarming beauties that are nonetheless the stereotyped victims of exclusion, people asleep in their relationship with reality.

　　The soft and round silhouette of their visages is dehumanized by the presence of empty and unreal glances. This contrast unveils the contradiction among the perfection and luminosity of a world made of brilliant, radiant, captivating and seductive colors, and the emptiness, the void, the abyss in which dead souls of our times are buried. The richness outside reveals the misery inside. The brightness of the colors doesn’t hide the opacity of sentiments; the aura underlined that encircles and embraces their faces so as to sanctify them uncovers the mediocrity of souls (Picture: China 2005, No.19).

　　To understand better Feng Zhengjie’s works is worth,and necessary, to go back to the beginning of his career, taking a journey down to his mysterious and alien world of colorful, cheerful and joyful icons. This journey has to start at the end of the 80’s. Feng Zhengjie spent his childhood in the Sichuan countryside and completed his studies at the Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts. During these years he deepened his knowledge of Western classics, such as Michelangelo, Raffaello and Cezanne, and also appreciated the art of big Chinese masters among which there are Xu Beihong and Qi Baishi. With regards to this last statement, I would like to mention a recent visit that I had the pleasure to share with Feng Zhengjie to the Florence “Museum Uffizi”. For him this was the first time to be able to see materialized in front of his eyes what he had been studying for years. His emotion was almost tangible: a well-known world, but never seen before, was slowly becoming real. I will never forget his glance, the way he approached to the works, really close, almost as to penetrate the secret of the great masters’ art. I believe there is nothing more interesting than going to a museum or to an exhibition with a real and authentic artist as Feng Zhengjie: his glimpse, his looking at the art works, they all undoubtedly let us understand the hard work, the constant patience, the dedicated learning and the true reflection that lay at the basis of his poetic research.

　　Going back to our journey, after the Tian’an Men crack in 1989, Feng Zhengjie started to question himself on Chinese society and to show interest for the works of the first Avant-garde artists. He discovered thus his vocation for a non-academic art quest: he felt a call for experimentation, the need to break up with the tradition and to focus his energies on the search for new techniques and new materials. In this period, drove by the necessity of visualize the anatomy of popular culture, of vivisection it and relate it to the more and more urgent perplexities, he creates his series known as “Analysis”. This is a first attempt to examine reality, the phenomena by which he was surrounded, and, in a word, to declare tough and defined intents. He paints pop stars, heroic figures and common people all of them dressed of a very thin layer of skin under which he stresses, with anatomic accuracy, the muscular fibers (Picture: Packing of China, 1992). The outer and the inner seem to enter a new visual relation, in which the artist statement is very clear: to the stereotyped expressions realized on glossy covers corresponds a horrible, freezing vision that takes shape in the pure anatomy of the muscles, undifferentiated, similar for everyone, no matter if it is a Rubens’s work (Picture: Hello, Mr. Rubens, 1992) or a portrait of TV stars, till the realization of his dramatic self portrait (Picture: Self-Analyze, 1992). The color of the anatomic sections is poured on the canvas as if it was blood; to the world of happy appearances corresponds the interior drama, to the skin, meat and blood.

　　I personally see in these first attempts the basis of Feng Zhengjie’s artistic study. The artist focuses on what he considers interesting, he creates a poetic based on real denounce and comprehension necessities. These works might appear to some extent naïve, however this is only the first step and he will have time to temper his tool so as to transfer this denounce to a more sophisticated, less obvious, less described and less explained level. This phase in his ascent shouldn’t be left behind because of the authenticity of his creative act, which is felt as a pushed deriving from different tones and shapes but that will never disappear in the following years.

　　After this series, he completes a new one “Recounting of skin: Totem of the 20th Century” in the 1996. The artist now inserts on a background made of blurring naked bodies wrapped together some odd frames with no-head corpses in plastic positions and covered by red bubbles. Skin is the protagonist, even though it’s an ill skin. Comparing to the previous works, we cannot see anymore what is hidden beneath, and the illness, although assuming decorative aspects, which then become ambiguous, is evident on the surface. This is like the capsizing of the earlier series. However, the thematic is the same, less declared, less described, but left to the free interpretation of the viewer, to the acumen of those who stare at it. Feng Zhengjie is feeling now freer: he doesn’t need to give direct explanations but the shapes he creates have themselves the power to speak up his message.

　　In the same period, his production conspicuously increases, and the series “Pet” appears. This work is dedicated to the fast over flown of consumerism: curious shaped pets emerge in milieu inhabited by status symbols and fashion images (Picture: Pet No.02, 1996). This sequence is brief and preludes to the following “Romantic Trips” in which allusions to some wedding photos noticed when visiting a friend’s studio are evident (Picture: Romantic Trip No.21, 1997). Feng Zhengjie portrays couples dressed in colorful traditional clothes that seem to act and simulate eternal happiness. The colors he chooses are those from popular art, from the Nian Hua, the drawings farmers were used to hang in their houses for the New Year. However, they have sharper colors, more similar to those used in the pop iconography and for adverts. Also the images’ cut is very little traditional, and more exaggerated with strong expressive accents. Tradition and modernity seem to converge, and Feng Zhengjie, through sensations and visual emotions belonging to his past, remove completely any declarative intents and the necessity of a direct critic. The images are free, the proportions have no longer a meaning, there’s no need of inserts, frames or graphic solutions anymore. Since then, his style becomes unmistakable and very personal. With this series begins a slightly baroques process which will soon dry up in a more essential one. He is more interested to social issues, rather than psychological matters, and his mannequins enter a consumerist world to which they actually belong. Nonetheless, their stereotyped smiles hide somewhat an interior drama proportional to the vivacity of colors and poses.

　　The series “Happiness” (Picture: Happiness No.04, 1998), which is a direct consequence of the “Romantic Trip”, presents couples exacerbating yet again their joy. These vibrant colored figures allude to a pleasure conquered with superficiality, without pain and without any interior efforts; they are still tied to those social conventions read out by those who artificially create fashion and induce to consume. Linked to a fashion discourse are “Vogue” and “Fashion” (Picture: Fashion No.02, 1998), in which female subjects assume a caricature tone, painted in thin bodies and topped by huge heads while dressed up in fashionable clothes. Their strange and bright hairstyles made of fruits together with their seductive glances resemble those of the models portrayed in famous magazines. This attempt is however part of the interior process the artist is passing through in order to give voice to his poetic vein and look for further analysis while exploring new picture techniques. To be able to understand the world around is a must for Feng Zhnegjie, and the only way to do it is to challenge new visual experiences, without forgetting about the origins and focusing on always-innovative aims. Feng Zhengjie is thus keen to face new paths and open new chapters in his artistic growth.

　　Between 2000 and 2001, together with the production of the works that will lead him to the technique of the paintings of today, Feng Zhengjie presents a peculiar series entitled “Coolness”. In these works, the colors are drier and the baroque backgrounds completely disappear, while often remain some monochrome spots. The colors radically diminish, and, instead of bright clothes and curious hairstyles, naked, bald and glabrous female bodies appear. The only elements that seem to linger are the noticeable lips, sometimes red, sometimes green, and the hyper modern sunglasses, which hinder the young fashion models’ soul, sentiments and emotions. Feng Zhengjie paints thus alien individuals with no sex specified that, without ornaments, colorful dresses, nor up to date hairstyles can nonetheless express through their physicality their adhesion to the seek of being “cool”, on fashion. They are characters orientated towards the future, and they show it with that arrogance, which is typical of these days, but that hides uncertainties, emptiness and looseness. They represent the future with no hints to the past, even though their poses seem to nostalgically carry elements from the tradition and from a humanity, which cannot be annulled, not even when reduced to futuristic mannequins. I believe the series “Coolness” is a fundamental step in Feng Zhengjie’s artistic discourse; it’s a research in a new field, more symbolic and less choreographic, more essential and less formal. (Picture: Coolness 2000 No.12). This is undoubtedly a very constructive research phase in which the artist can move on and free himself from certain rules he is restrained by. Once again, Feng Zhengjie displays his authenticity as an artist that stresses the importance of the research rather than the repetition of thematic, an artist that considers painting as a tool to comprehend the world and the phenomena which characterize it, and also as a way to understand himself while getting close to his “IO”. In this cycle, the artist is mainly involved in an analysis focusing on interiority. Before abandoning the topic of “Coolness’, it is interesting to underline the ironic approach which is typical of it. The last work of this series, for example, is a small oil painting portraying a young lady, a fashion model, wearing sunglasses and red lipstick while posing as Marylin Monroe does in the movie “Someone Like It Hot” when her skirt is swirling around (Picture: Coolness 2001 No.08).

　　Together with “Coolness” is the creation of two other series: “Butterfly in Love”, which faded away in two years, and “China” that is still on production today. “Butterfly in Love” shows a link to some adverts that Feng Zhengjie found by chance on a magazine in a Shanghai bookstore. He begins thus to compare two different worlds: the one inhabited by the models of the past, and the one of the young lady of today. They both have in common their exacerbated vanity. The main focus is once again on female characters, which firstly appear as shy and timid while glimpsing at each other, and later become more seductive and sensual, as portraying the complicity emblematic of women. (Picture: Butterfly in Love No.20, 2003). The irony is blunter, and the tone is less loud. “Happiness” is more real than just declared, and the all scene is more as suggested rather than being shouted out. All the elements of the previous works come up to the surface, even though less bright. And we encounter again the postures of “Skin” and “Coolness”, the variety of faces of “Analysis” and “Pets”, the colors of the “Romantic Journeys” and the traditional images of “Happiness”.

　　The last stop in Feng Zhengjie artistic universe is the series “China” at which the artist is still working. The canvas is still full of vivid and dazzling colors. It’s a symphony of lips, faces, hairstyles, smiles and glances. (Picture: China 2003 No.13). Beautiful ladies live in this space while transmitting somewhat of a drama, alienation and emptiness. The artist is now mature: he doesn’t need to declare anything anymore. He can let himself deepening inside the aesthetic research, while showing a unique and very personal expressionism, so effectual to become the best manifest of Chinese contemporary art. I believe there is no artist that can nowadays best describe the challenge and process through which Chinese traditions underwent while experiencing the consequences of these last years’ globalization and new richness. Feng Zhengjie’s works underline the void, which has been created between the quality of material life and the traditional spiritual values. In China, today, life styles are very similar to those of the Western world, but there is a sort of distrainment due to the fast adaptation to wealth and consumerism, something very distant to be able to get used to, especially for such an old civilization, which seem now losing its soul (Picture: China 2004 No.18).

　　This doesn’t happen to Feng Zhengjie who, with these fast rhythmic paintings, with his fresh and vivid images created with a skill, which can derive only from a long technical train, maintains in his work an enigmatic but evident spirituality. Feng Zhengjie’s visual communication is fast and immediate, so direct and vital that doesn’t need mediations. His canvases open up to a new world, which seems to have forgotten its history and involve us in an original and aesthetic vision that tell about contemporary life through images.

　　Painting is a medium that could appear in frantic times, as those, which belong to us, not suited and very far from the contemporary spirit. In this case, though, it is revealed as an experimental and very modern medium because it is amazing, if compared to the expectation, and surprising, if compared to the reality we perceive. It’s a painting that involves contemporary, technological styles, and uses them as iconical referent for renewing itself and becoming more effective and incisive. Nowadays we can say that Feng Zhengjie’s paintings, more than any other photos or videos, drive us closer to the spirit of a unique and unrepeatable season represented by the awaking of this big and wonderful nation.

　　Feng Zhengjie, through his work, advances questions and gives possible answers comparing himself with the daily life through the complex relations that he creates with the outside world. To relate with Feng Zhengjie’s works means, first of al,l to critically reconsider the comfortable certainties derived from experience and habit. In fact, it is not so easy a classification of his paintings in the schemes of pop art, kitch and traditional Chinese painting. They are works that force the viewer to make many questions because his painting is not a pure aesthetic fact, it’s rather an activity that involves, in its development, intellectual and ethic components that act in the social world, in which it is produced and, at the same time, they introduce new forms of sensitivity, perceptions and, we wish, behavior.

　　I would like to close this writing underlining how much Feng Zhengjie’s work represents, also for me, a continuous surprise and how much is the interest towards a research made by an artist that seems to be not satisfied and calm down by his success. His work, in fact, reflects an intense state of conscience typical of who lives, as human condition, the situation of constantly knocking at the door, moved by the desire of exploring and understanding, in the wish of obtaining that condition in which he is conscious that the land of purity and determination is only an idle word and that since the beginning there is nothing that need explanations or comments.

　　P.S.: I didn’t want to include statements by the artist because I agree with the famous Matisse’s phrase: “the painter has, first of all, to have his tongue cut”. This is not because I believe less interesting what the artist could have said, but because I am sure that art speaks without words and the completed artistic piece communicates without schemes and could be better understood if in a direct way. This is generally speaking, of course, without anything having been taken away from the interesting Feng Zhengjie’s interviews.

　　Bologna, July 15th 2005

　　Lorenzo Sassoli de Bianchi

　　(President, Museo D’Arte Moderna, Bologna. Italy)