Kwai Fung Hin Art Gallery of Hong Kong proudly presents “Musings on the Post-Materialistic Era”, the latest solo exhibition of Chinese painter FANG, Shao Hua in May 2011.

Born in Shashi City, Hubei province, China, in 1962, FANG Shao Hua was graduated from the Oil Painting Department of Hubei Institute of Fine Arts in 1983. Since 1995, he lives and works in Guangzhou. He is a professor of the Art Academy of the South China Normal University. His works are collected in many museums, including National Art Museum, Beijing, Shanghai Art Museum and Kunst Museum, Bonn.

Fang comes from an intellectual family, from seven he read Tang poems, practised calligraphy and learnt ink painting. From eleven, he imitated and probed works of Russian realism and European masters. Like many great artists, he is a genius. In 1977, he won a second prize in a nationwide painting competition, he was just fifteen. He is one of the very few contemporary Chinese artists who can master both the traditional Chinese calligraphy and ink painting and the classical western oil skills.

He is one of the pioneers in the famous 1985 new art movement which is an important milestone in the development of Chinese contemporary art during the last 25 years. In his early period, he was influenced by the German Neo-expressionism, but very soon, with the highly acclaimed “ Arch Series “, he established his own artistic language. In 1996, he was invited to participate in the group exhibition “ China ! “ at Kunst Museum, Germany, all invitees are leading figures in contemporary Chinese art, including Zhang Xiao-gang, Wang Guang-yi, Yue Min-jun, Fang Li-jun, Zhou Chun-ya and Wei Guang-qin.

Apart from art creation, he has made very substantial contribution to the contemporary art education in China. He has trained and influenced numerous young artists, his students included very successful stars like Zeng Fanzhi, Mao Yan, Shi Chong and Ma Liuming.

Having painted for more than 30 years, he still maintains an endless curiosity about art. He paints simply out of his passion for art, for the sake of enjoying painting. He consistently puts in full effort to move forward and is unwilling to remain stagnant or repetitive. Each piece of his works is a new journey for himself and invariably brings yet another surprise to his audience.

“Musings on the Post-Materialistic Era” is an unusual opportunity of showing the entire “Variant Series” of FANG up-to-date in one exhibition. In this series, various classics like “Mona Lisa”, “The Last Supper” and “Luncheon on the Grass” are used as metaphors to create new works embodying FANG’s own artistic messages, all through his magical strokes developed from both classical western oil painting and traditional Chinese calligraphy.

“Mortal Immortality” is the latest master piece of the “Variant series”. Here, the classic Mona Lisa is used.

It is a set of nine pairs of painting, each consisted of the picture of a “damaged or smeared” Mona Lisa and a portrait of the relevant tool for making the damage or smudge. The artist shows us how a world class treasure like Mona Lisa, if not cherished and properly protected, could be damaged or smeared in the spread of a second, by a knife or a pistol or the graffiti from a sprayer or the writings from a Chinese brush, or by splashing ink on it or by throwing an egg or a tomato or a piece of cake or darts at it.

In each of the “damaged Mona Lisa”, the figure of Mona Lisa is executed with such masterly classical western oil skills that challenge the origin work, while the background is filled with the signature Chinese calligraphic strokes of FANG. And, the marks of damage or the smudges on the figure of Mona Lisa are all so lifelike that from “Tomato” the viewers seem to be able to “smell” the smashed tomato drawn, and in front of “Pistol” the viewers are almost tempted to try to inert their fingers into the bullet punches depicted on the canvas.

The portraits of the tools for making the damages, including a knife, a pistol, a sprayer, a Chinese brush, a bottle of ink, an egg, a tomato, a piece of cake and a few darts are equally vivid, but they are in black and white, so as to further enrich the work with a partita.

The exhibition will continue until June 4th 2011.