Style
Fang Lijun made a large number of works featuring the subject "bald heads". Under the influence of his family and friends, his art expresses the freedom, the integrity in two different settings: traditional and modern era, and the will of making a change. He explained in an interview that he wished to send a message about the lives of painters through bald-head figures. The bald headed traditional Chinese men are viewed as dumb or stupid. Through these figures, he is sending a message about morality and how people define what is normal based on physical appearance, rather than internal moral character. Fang Lijun values the individual stories of each person. He is asking the society to look at painters as normal people, as people who are making a change, rather than as eccentric outcasts.
In his paintings, he also uses elements of water and flower a lot. Water plays a big role in Fang Lijun's paintings. On an interview, he explained that water is helping him convey a message about his feeling and his voice about the truth and what is going in Chinese society. His famous work with water is the guy being drowned in the water. Part of the reason for this paining relates to his childhood experience when he was almost drown. The second and most important part relation about this painting is he is expressing his feelings about the Chinese society. When the guy is drown in the water, that guy is representing for painter like Fang Lijun. He feels like he does not have a voice, that he is powerless in this societal structure and that he cannot even make his own decision or speak the right truth. Also, his hope is to freely go and move in the water metaphorically. He is hoping to be able to speak for himself, for other artists and to inspire everybody.
He is one of the artists who is standing in the middle line between traditional and modern practice. For example, he still follows the process of the carving wood with the negative image, coats it with ink and then impresses the image on the paper. Because one art projects requires different color immersion, Fang uses different plates and a set order of printing on different adjoined scrolls. Each scroll represents for one individual against the mass which leads to "personal probity" in facing adversity.
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