Zhou Fan
Throughout Zhou’s different series of painting, he mainly uses the same mediums and has a very distinct style of painting. Zhou has a hibit of having a strong focal point in his paintings with crazy detailed smaller images around the focal point. He makes his focal point more dramatic by keeping the background a flat colour around his large detailed painting that tends to be in the centre.
Zhous paintings always contain many vivid patterns, textures and shapes. He creates these effects mainly by using a large variety of lines.
You may think that his images would be overwhelming from the dramatic colour schemes and insane detail, but as you can see they are very plesent to look at. Zhou creates this appeal to his images by keeping the colours, and shapes balanced. Zhou pairs cool colours with warm colours and large shapes with smaller ones that create a wonderful harmony to his images. This way he can add as much detail into his pictures as he would like without overwhelming his audience.
What I Enjoy
- Clear that Zhou Fan's paintings are incredibly colourful and detailed
- The brightness of the colour schemes in his work gives a happy and cheerful impression
- Although many of them have a sad undertone
- You truly must study a piece to understand what he is trying to portray
- Even then you do not fully understand them until he explains his pieces
- For example Zhou painted a series titled 'Teacher I Won't Do It Again'
Design of Zhou's Paintings
Inspiration
One of Zhou’s main priorities is to make his art appealing to his audience, he does this by combining what is impossible and what is beautiful within his paintings.
A good indication of this is shown in a new series Zhou's painted called 'Love Of Jellyfish'. In one of his paintings from this series, the tentacles of the jellyfish are dangling down from the women’s headwear/dress. The tentacles are reaching down, holding up an object in front of a woman. The various, twisted tentacles has been said to represent the complications of life and how twists and entanglements of even small things can tie people down. But also, they are simply the result of wearing a hat made of jellyfish! The results can be confusing and chaotic-seeming, which relates to being impossible and beautiful.
A bit about Zhou...
'Teacher I Won't Do It Again'
- This series consisted of a young fat boy with moles and a tire of fat around his neck and was always eating candy
- Presumably the boy was eating too much candy and was upset about being overweight (which could be why in some photos the boy is crying)
- In his painting but Zhou makes the boy seem almost humorous.
- Leaves the viewer to interpret what may or may not actually be happening
- It turns out that this subject-matter also goes back to Zhou Fan’s childhood, when he had a very fat classmate in school who could not stop eating candies. Zhou was sympathetic towards the boy and felt bad when teachers were harsh to his fat classmate and the boy is crying because he keeps things within him, is easily sad, and he refuses to face reality.
- known as one of the exciting new contemporary Chinese artists
- mostly based on his past experiences
"My paintings are based on dreams that I had as a child of many, many jellyfish floating in the sky, some of which fell to the ground on parachutes and became mushrooms. These dreams had a strong impact on me, and I remember them vividly."
Although the meaning behind his paintings vary greatly. Zhou says the subject of his paintings are composed solely of what appears interesting and beautiful to him.