This catalogue essay was commissioned on the occassion of “Shen Fan: Works in Abstraction, 1992–2017” at Eli Klein Gallery. The essay traces a single coherent philosophical project, beginning with early paintings that merge Chinese brush-and-ink landscape convention with Western all-over abstraction, through the “ShanShui” series—in which humanity's influence on nature has undeniably altered it—and into the “Punctuation” series, where newspaper text becomes a third, informational landscape.
Shen Fan’s Works in Abstraction
Shen’s canvases, which have drawn comparisons to Abstract Expressionism, were the result of one artist’s struggles—against tradition, against the picture plane, even against himself.
- Publication
- Eli Klein Gallery
- Published
- November 29, 2018
- Translated by
- Phil Cai (Mandarin)
- Genre
- Essay