The phrase ‘Ulcer being gaudy as a peach/plum’ originated from Mr.Lu Xun who used it to satirize those impractical scholars in ancient China who had showed off their learning and described ulcer with a peach/plum. I’m quoting the phrase to summarize the language character of Feng Zhengjie’s recounting of Skin. When he started to create the work Recounting of Skin—Mandarin Ducks in 1994,Feng Zhengjie defined this style. For instance, he used folk mandarin ducks playing with water as a language symbol of jubilation, red as the main tone, nudes and faces full of ulcerative dots as the contrast and causality to construct this painting of three parts, with a gaudy peach/plum revealing ulcer. Here he made the symbolic style of his works clear.

　　Thereafter, he used ‘Double Xis’ and ‘wedding festivities’ in his language symbol which is ‘gaudy as a peach/plum’. That's a further step after Mandarin Ducks in which the contrast and causality of gaudiness and ulceration were used. However, in his latest works, the language symbol which is ‘gaudy as a peach/plum’ has gradually become symbolic prompting and ornament of the painting, such as a lily-of-the-valley, or some little lotus flowers, or flourishing metropolis night scenery and so on. And the ulcerative nudes are increasingly becoming the main image of the painting, even the background has become a rocking, uneasy and ulcerative corporal world. The handing of rocking background is the important method that Feng used to promote expressionism into his paintings, and to decrease the decorationism and sober-minded symbolism in his previous works. As a result of a graduate from Sichuan Institute of Fine Arts, it seems to indicate that Feng’s works have had a trend of traditional style which southwestern painters are used to, i.e.the speciality of combining expressionism and imaged language symbol.

　　From the causality language of gaudiness and ulceration, we can have a direct feeling of sexuality relating to the world. Behind gaudiness and jubilation is the disaster which sexuality and AIDS have been bringing to the world. Yet it is only a symbol behind which is a metaphorical prediction, or an image of the world we live in, an image of gaudy common world that brings us happiness—although being ‘gaudy as a peach/plum’, it’s ‘ulcerative’. In fact, it is the artist’s intuitive knowledge and sensitivity, that when we have to face the spirit-broken times, we are entering a showy and luxurious, gaudy and common world full of desires.

　　March 26th, 1996