The young Hong Kong artist’s style gradually emerged at the 2017 New Art Wave Expo, leaving a deep impression with his realistic landscape paintings, his unique artistic technique often elevating the scenery of a place. Recently, New Art Wave Gallery presented the artist’s solo exhibition themed around the four seasons, leading the audience to uncover the poetry hidden in a corner of the city.
The beauty of Feng gradually emerges from his restrained yet rich personality. With meticulous brushstrokes and cleverly designed compositions, he presents familiar yet unseen cityscapes, inviting viewers into a realm between reality and imagination. The artist’s landscape paintings are extraordinary, deliberately abandoning depth and spatial construction, yet retaining a sense of dimension and shape contrast, creating a unique atmosphere with carefully crafted compositions. He paints seemingly repetitive but dense elements on the canvas, including leaves, flowers, bricks, and buildings, showcasing intricacy and realism.
The artist painted the “cardboard stone wall” seen only in old-style public housing estates, full of local characteristics, also evoking memories for many Hong Kong people. He carefully manages color, light and shadow, composition, and artistic conception, allowing each piece of cardboard stone, leaves, etc., to shine with their own vitality in the work. In “Iron Wintergreen Tree,” the lush big tree serves as the main subject of the work, with the red fruits adding the finishing touch, and the sudden appearance of the deep Turkish blue brick stone wall on the far right of the picture unexpectedly transcends the original artistic conception.
Another series of works in the exhibition, themed around the four seasons, captures the rich emotions of the Fengjian aesthetic. Using ancient colors rarely seen in contemporary paintings, the artist creates a classical and enduring atmosphere in the works. In “Spring,” the use of turquoise and Potter’s Pink highlights the vibrant spring; mixing purple madder and cadmium yellow creates a deep green for “Summer,” paired with bright light turquoise to emphasize the deep and transparent green of summer; “Autumn” is depicted with clear yellow and a clever expression of crispness on the leaves of a tree; the blue iron ore color of the bare branches conveys the desolate and chilling atmosphere of winter.
The works exhibited this time embody the increasing emphasis on the “physicality” of painting. The ancient pigments used in these works are now rarely produced and need to be ground by the artists themselves to add a more classical and elegant beauty to the works.
Visitors are welcome to visit the exhibition and appreciate how the artworks depict these seemingly nonexistent beautiful cityscapes through intricate techniques.
“Seemingly Familiar, Yet Unseen: The Art of Wind Painting”
Date: From now until May 20
Time: 2:30 PM to 6:30 PM
Location: New Art Wave Gallery, Room 201, 2nd Floor, Tung Chee Building, 86-90 Wellington Street, Central, Hong Kong
Image source and learn more: Art Next Gallery
