LI Feifan: When the Initial Moment Falls: Curated by LIU Yue

Overview
LI Feifan: When the Initial Moment Falls, Curated by LIU Yue
BONIAN SPACE is pleased to announce the upcoming solo exhibition, When the Initial Moment Falls, by the emerging artist Li Feifan from October 14th to November 14th, 2023. Curated by Liu Yue, this exhibition will feature over ten paintings from the artist's recent practice.
  
Born in 1995 in Zhejiang, Li Feifan graduated from the Printmaking Department of Sichuan Fine Arts Institute with a bachelor's degree and a master's degree from the Oil Painting Department at the same college. Different from his early printmaking practice, Li’s recent paintings focus on paper and canvas, searching for a feasible path in the present through the reorganization of memory, and explore the multiple possibilities of acrylic paint and canvas material affecting the texture of the picture.
 
The use of acrylic medium and the characteristics of acrylic paint make his paintings always full of fluid brushstrokes, layered translucent colors and chaotic spaces which are shattered. The consideration of painting media and carriers allows the materials in his works to serve as a narrative method - the world that wanders, melts or burns, the world that dumps on the timeline and in a state of neutral rebirth, the world full of contradictions, dangerous but wonderful world, and all the images become more established due to the construction of brushstrokes and materials. For example, it is the flowing second layer of the picture created by artist in Painting Game connects the external space with the space of the creator in the painting.
 

Memories are evoked in certain special situations, and Li Feifan focuses on those moments in memory that continue to hit us. When the initial moment is wrapped in layers of time, the development of details gradually becomes blurred because of the thickness of time, but we can still recognize the vague outline of memory in many recent moments. 

 

Describing any personal history is to describe the present. The depict of memory in Li's works is also to touch the outline of memory in the fog of life, and looking for the guidance for what is happening in the present. However, this kind of depiction is not intended to establish an exact answer for the present, but to establish an experience and possibility for life through the analysis of painting. The overlapping of experiences make those moments appear as unfamiliar images. Those teenagers whose faces have been simplified or even lost in The Utopian Garden and Afflatus series seem to be the travelers spinning in the depths of memory, the character is distanced from the viewer due to the loss of characteristics, but it is also because of the loss of characteristics make it seems to have a carrier of meaning.

 

In Li Feifan's works, we can relive these precious moments countless times, and move from private memories to the universal emotions they evoke. But when the initial moment falls again with a strange appearance, the heart of the creator doesn’t indulge in that time that is actually completely different, but follows the gravity of the current pace and flows to the distance where the truth lies.

Installation Views
Back to exhibitions