Born in 1987, graduated in 2013 from the Sculpture Department of Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts, Shenyang, Liaoning Province. He now lives and works in Beijing.

Fangxu has already been widely recognized as a promising sculptor in contemporary China art scene. He has won many important sculpture awards in China, and his works are collected by Chinese and foreign institutions and individuals such as the German-Middle-Aged and Young Artists Development Fund, the Changchun Songshan Hanrong African Art Collection Museum, and the Changchun International Sculp-ture Park.

Many of his works were selected for the “Star Project - Con-temporary Young Artists Exhibition” and participated in the Japan-Korea tour exhibition.

The motif of elongated, often neither realistic nor proportioned, but highly stylized portrayals of human bodies reappear in Fang Xu’s sculptures, paintings, and woodblock prints. His subjects are rather symbols of something that humans represent than images of actual people. They migrate from two-dimensional to volumetric space with effortless ease as if they possess a shape-shifting ability. Precise articulate lines and smooth forms of his sculptures evoke the planeness and clarity of a drawing. Intricately rendered light and shadow effects in his paintings breathe in life and lend emotional depth to otherwise inanimate figures. 

The paradox of Fang Xu's sculpted, painted, and printed works lies in the imagery that is so immediately understandable and so available we cannot avoid it; yet behind the minimalist and seemingly over-simplified manner of expression, there are depth and hidden stories that add a level of complexity we did not anticipate in the first place. 

In the "Half a Smile" series that Fang Xu started to work on over ten years ago, the details that have been left out are the ones that guide us to the heart and soul of his creations. His work is about making us see what is not there. His reductive style allows focusing on the essence, where essence is what lies beneath the surface, hidden deeper within, behind the appearances.

His human figures are portrayed either solitary, in couples, or in groups, from their torsos up, as well as standing or walking. In Fang Xu’s paintings, their unnaturally elongated torsos and limbs seem boneless, modeled out of clay or carved out of stone. As they reincarnate into bronze sculptures, the dynamic energy of line you find in Fang Xu's painted work unites with gliding cylindric, ovoid, and pyramid forms.

In some of his works, the characters are accompanied by small animals like a cat, a dog, a fish, or a bird. In others, they appear to be caring for a plant or a flower, poetically re-evoking Saint-Exupéry’s famous, “You become responsible, forever, for what you’ve tamed.” 

Fang Xu’s figures are stripped of distinctive features as if they have been robbed of their identity. The economy of style and details produces ambiguous personages. Nothing hints at their age, gender, physical appearance, or occupation. Who these people are - does not seem to be the question that should concern us. Fang Xu’s paintings and woodblock prints bare no further clues for the viewers. No natural, architectural, or interior features, nor items of personal belongings that provide helpful references. Instead, uninhibited and monochromatic backgrounds that guide our attention back to the figures in the foreground. 

By distilling his sculptural and painterly language into minimalist means of expression, refined lines, concise shapes, and smooth gliding forms, the artist eliminates the clutter, unnecessary embellishment, and distracting details.

Like a photographer who focuses the lens of his camera on the desired object with just a few precise moves, Fang Xu articulates and concentrates his idea within just a few clear, economic lines. With everything else abbreviated and reduced, we become very cautious and attentive to the details we see. The facial features, or their absence, the gestures, body language, and a few selected objects that enter the picture, instantly become the landmarks that pull us into Fang Xu’s bare painterly and sculptural landscapes.  

Composed and somewhat languid, Fang Xu’s figures appear with the same facial expressions: unreadable, but not blank. An articulate crisp line crowns an almond-shaped eye and continues into a long straight nose guiding our sight down to the pronounced little groove that finally runs to full and prominent lips. This uninterrupted line formulates the split but also connects as a bridge two halves of the face - the one that we see and the other that we don't. 

Albeit having only a half of the face portrayed, the figures seem complete, almost absolute. They are fully present and intriguing. We capture a sense of wonder, a sense of mystery, and a real sense of ourselves in them. The empty half suddenly turns into the infinite, and we are compelled to retreat deeper within into our own thoughts and imaginings. 

The series takes its name from a prominent feature of the works. A half signifies only a fragment of ourselves that we reveal to the many different worlds we are faced with daily. For the smile that lights our faces with joy when we look at our loved ones is not the same smile we share with our co-workers and polite strangers. A different half of the self comes to the surface as we find ourselves in different situations. Some halves only reveal themselves in the moments of quiet and solitary contemplation. Others surface in a glass of wine. There are terrifying halves that manifest unexpectedly in moments of agonizing pain, loneliness, frustration, or anger. Halves that are vulnerable, forgiving, and accepting emerge when we decide to ask for help and treat ourselves with kindness and compassion. We notice the halves of others based on the ones we acknowledge in ourselves. Similarly, when portrayed face to face, human figures in Fang Xu’s works seem to see in each other a mere reflection of themselves. 

Many of Fang Xu’s sculptures in bronze depict couples from their torsos up, melting in a loving embrace with arms wrapped around each other. Groups of people leaning against one another, their reclining heads resting on someone else's shoulder. Often symmetrical and mirror reflected they are barely differentiated in their simplicity but it is their unity that draws us in. A highly charged relationship between the outer form and inner core emerges. Suddenly, we can feel the underlying energy that simmers beneath the surface. The outer skin of the polished bronze sculptures and stony shell of the painted figures reflect the contours of inner dynamism and complexity of a human world, of conscious and unconscious connections built and developed over a lifetime with the selves, people, nature, and environments around us.

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote, “It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.” And so it is the working of our own hearts that will guide us to the soul of any creation, measure the fullness of the infinite, define the undefinable, and capture the ephemeral.

It doesn't matter how many times our rational and judgemental mind tries to summit Fang Xu’s laconic work - grasp onto its slippery and rounded forms, grab hold of its lines, challenge its smoothness, and question its simplicity - it inevitably slips and falls. Our heart, however, effortlessly immerses in Fang Xu's works' reflective depth and finds sensual and poetic in something that at first might have seemed cold, detached, or flat.  The Infinite of Self

On Fang Xu Half a Smile series 

By Liya Prilipko