Fan Zhen: Unicorn

Fan Zhen is an abstract painter whose art centres on the therapeutic colour field and energy expansion. Her visual creations strongly echo Daoism and Buddhism, which are mysterious yet existentialist. The paintings attempt to grasp the fleeting moments in life and engage the audience directly with purity, blurring the ephemeral and the eternal. Although abstract art in Western senses has exhausted inspiration regarding formal languages and theories, Eastern philosophical thinking, exempt from the modern/postmodern dichotomy, offers new ways of examining the entity of art and life. As a female artist living in China, Fan Zhen endeavoured to convey her art to a much wider audience, with concerns referring but not limited to gender, class, power and ethics. Fan Zhen’s art stems from traditional Chinese culture and adopts a contemporary temperament with the need for counter-anxiety caused by rapid change in society. Daoism and Buddhism, as philosophical contexts, have generated a great heritage of visual language that differs from Western abstract art. The book explores Fan Zhen’s art, validating the value of life and faith in vision.