Feng Zheng-Jie (1968-) is one of the major artists of the ‘Kitsch School’. Born in Sichuan province, he lives in Beijing with a group of painters in the suburb of Huajdi. His very individual style concentrates on the identity of his generation in the face of tradition. His paintings juxtapose classical references with the changes of modernity.

The tradition of portraiture is a recent one in Chinese painting, which has tended to prefer landscapes to the human figure. In the 90’s, a number of artists showed an interest in this genre, and some even invested it with a powerful eroticism. The best known of these artists in the West is Zhang Xiaogang, who draws on old official photo-portraits to explore the grey area between standardised images and more personal insights. But Feng Zheng-Jie’s images are more provocative and violent. Far from the serenity of single-parent families, his is disturbed by the faces of women, often close up and naked. His women are hysteric gorgons, threatening vamps with their eyes rolled upwards.

He uses an almost florescent, acid-sweet palette, drawing on Pop Art, cinema posters, popular culture, everyday consumer goods, and cheap dolls which serve only to reinforce the expressiveness and visual impact of his models.

By caricaturing the feminine universe, Feng Zheng-Jie aims to break with the tradition of the macho communist. He is concerned with the the repressed Chinese psyche and Maoist sexual repression, seeking to bring back what has been lost: desire, lust, fear of women, sexual disorder, base instincts and sexual ambiguity. He reinvents the Chinese woman, and thereby expresses the profound changes in his society. Chinese women are being gradually freed: in the new cities, they have access to fashion, consumer goods, cosmetics and a form of sexual liberation, albeit one still hindered by social codes and marriage. Magazines are ubiquitous, as are the fashionistas of Hong Kong and Taiwan. Herein lies the internal transformation of society.

To add force to these observations, Feng-Zheng Jie uses the traditional iconography of  Chinese painting: fans, bright-coloured peonies, floral peasant fabrics that contrast with his bug-eyed dominatrixes, pagodas that brush shoulders with modern architecture. For Feng Zheng-Jie, this woman is an allegory for both the changes overtaking Chinese society and their accompanying violence.

View available works by Zheng-Jie

See also at the Galerie Albert Benamou-Véronique Maxé Femmes de Chine.

In collaboration with Xin-Dong Cheng in Beijing