Recent Paintings by Qin Feng

Even in the diverse and dynamic world of contemporary Chinese art, Qin Feng is a maverick. Born in 1961 in Xinjiang Province, China, he began to question authority and unsettle tradition during his student years at the elite Shandong Art Institute, from which he earned his bachelor's degree in mural painting. A complex and cerebral artist, Qin Feng has long experimented with the conservative teachings of his traditional Chinese art education and in 1985 was the only student to graduate with both top honors and a disciplinary record.

Qin moved to Berlin in 1995 when the German government invited him to curate an exhibition promoting cultural exchange between China and Germany. Upon moving to the United States, Qin Feng earned a fellowship and residency with the prestigious MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire and has exhibited and performed at the Asia Pacific Museum in California and at the Asia Society and Museum in New York.

Today, Qin Feng's mature style reflects a fine distillation of his intellectual and aesthetic approach to art. Living in the West since the mid-1990s, he employs Western art materials, techniques and approaches while remaining rooted in what he describes as his Chinese "mother tongue" of art.

The formal aspects of his education as a painter, as well as his regard for his own cultural heritage, have given Qin Feng a deep respect and appreciation for Chinese calligraphy. Unwilling, however, to adhere rigidly to the strict formulae of the Classical styles, Qin produces work that nevertheless freely acknowledges the intellectual legacy of Chinese brush-painting while rejoicing in the freedom of the modernist movement.

His paintings are often marked by a raw emotional quality, played out in dramatically thick strokes of ink across the specifically prepared Chinese xuan paper that he favors. His calligraphy reveals the beauty of the Chinese brushstroke and explores the tension between each stroke of ink and the significance of each unmarked void.

The fluidity and energy of Qin Feng's work have led many to compare his style to Abstract Expressionism. Though the artist acknowledges the association, he also insists that his paintings are not pure abstraction. Just as the traditions of Chinese culture and beliefs re-enter his work in the spiritual and intellectual significance of lines and circular forms, so too does Western Abstract Expressionism intersect with his own ways of thinking. Out of these intellectual crossroads Qin Feng creates paintings of striking boldness and intensity which are examples of a modernist aesthetic that is relevant and meaningful to the contemporary world.

Since 1999 Qin Feng has been living and working in Boston, Massachusetts.