A pioneer of China’s “Post-1989 New Art Movement”, Fang Lijun’s iconic ‘bald-headed’ figures have pioneered the “Rascal Culture” and “Cynical Realism” (Li Xianting, 1991) in Chinese contemporary art since the early 1990s. Since the beginning of his artistic career, Fang Lijun has constantly been identifying himself with “living like a wild dog”. As one of the key motifs of his art, Fang Lijun’s “Human & Figures” works deconstruct the interplay and mixture between the typical portraits and stereotypical faces of an era, capture the shared pains and feelings of the present time and life in a transcendental manner.

Using “Human & Figures” as a narrative clue, this exhibition aims to provide a classic yet fresh perspective on Fang Lijun. We have chosen to present three main sections: “Introspection: Self-Portraits”, “Mutual Reflections: Friends”, and “The Light of Dust: Human”, which strive to showcase the creative journey that the artist has taken, with a particular focus on his new experiments with a variety of media that range from traditional Chinese painting, oil painting, print, and sculpture to the virtual space of NFT during the last decade. Besides these sections, the curatorial team also attempt to elaborate on the theme of “Human & Figures” in this first solo exhibition of Fang Lijun in Macao with a temporal clue through three additional displays of “Passage”, “Video”, and “Publications”. All viewers, both online and offline, are invited to take a glimpse, through Fang Lijun’s works, into the zeitgeist of contemporary China and lend a listening ear to our own internal voices.