Lot 61

Conceptio Unlimited Limited, Hong Kong
Private collection, Melbourne, acquired from the above 24 January 2014

"Early in his career, Feng produced a series of
paintings that took Tibetan buildings and cultural
referents found in Sichuan as its thematic nucleus.
Against the staunch immobility of the looming
architecture, the artist inserted apparition like
figures that appear, through their blurred, painterly
silhouettes, to be in rapid movement. The problem of
the "body in motion" persists throughout his career
and it is a relentless investigation that eventually
delivered him to his current "Dance" series, one that
conflates the artist's dexterity in wielding ink with the
properties of modern media.

Venturing into the world of canvases, acrylics, and
watercolours, Feng conjures up a reverie punctuated
by nameless dancers who waltz in and out of
vision. The washes of pigment are so seamlessly
layered together that a luminosity emerges amid a
composition teetering between representation and
abstraction. The cool anonymity of the depicted
scenes clash with their visual warmth, a paradox not
unlike the prevalent phenomenon of social dancing,
where strangers meet in a mutual thirst for physical
intimacy and perhaps something more.

Amounting to an oblique commentary on
contemporary urban China, Feng's "Dance" series,
propels forward the legacy of Chinese painting in
subtly innovative directions. ‘Dancing in Red Shadows'
dramatically expanded Feng Bin's "Dance" series.
It comes in four parts, is a work of acrylic on silk
and represents the series at its finest. In the painting,
Feng Bin conjures up a reverie punctuated by
nameless dancers who waltz in and out of vision.
The cool anonymity of the depicted clashes with the
visual warmth of the colours, a paradox not unlike
the prevalent phenomenon of social dancing in
contemporary urban China, where strangers meet
in a mutual thirst for physical intimacy and perhaps
something more." (excerpt, Conceptio Art Gallery)