Shen FAN
1952, China

Shen Fan is one of the leading abstract artists in China. He lives and works in Shanghai, the Chinese city which is home to the country's best abstract painters. While realism dominates the Chinese avant garde, it is perhaps the cosmopolitan, fast moving pulse of Shanghai which encourages abstraction.

Shen Fan's work from the mid to late nineties was ordered in its rhythm while the most recent work is much freer. The marks are looser than the more linear constructions of the majority of the artist's pieces and the movement within the work greater. The work of 2000 takes up an idea the artist was already pursuing in 1994, that is works which can be interpreted as an abstraction of calligraphy. Throughout the 1990s in China there has been a movement to deconstruct calligraphy as a way of examining and criticising tradition. Shen Fan numbers his work to avoid any attempt at associating the paintings with a realistic image.

For the European eye, these paintings clarify the secrets of the East, the search for the sublime, which need not reproduce reality.

--------------------------

Next to paintings and works on paper, Shen Fan has recently focused on installation art into which he integrates neon illuminations.
Works by Shen Fan have long accomplished international renown. The artist, who lived in the "Collection Studio" in Lincoln in 2008, had numerous solo shows around the globe, for instance in Bangkok (2005), London and Tübingen (2004) or in New York (2002). Shen Fan lives and works in Shanghai. [DB].
Shen Fan is represented in, among others:
• Galerie Carol Johnssen, Munich
• Chinese Contemporary, New York/Beijing
• ShanghART Gallery, Shanghai
• Shen Fan - Landscape 9210, ShanghART Gallery, Shanghai, 2012
• Shen Fan - Videos and Paintings, Galerie Carol Johnssen, Munich, 2011

Source: http://www.chinesecontemporary.com/shen_fan.htm http://www.kettererkunst.com/