Red
Qin Fengling
秦凤玲
Production date
2006
Object Detail
Media
acrylic on canvas
Measurements
150 x 250 cm
Notes
Qin Fengling’s works blur boundaries: between painting and sculpture; between two dimensions and three; between ‘naive’ art and narrative painting; between a language of colour and pattern, and figuration. Qin identifies her husband, Wang Luyan, as the major influence on her work; he was her first teacher and her most important supporter. But she has also acknowledged the influence of other artists, in particular Zhu Jinshi, who also paints with a heavy impasto. Without a foundation of drawing, she had to seek other ways to create her imagery, organising tiny figures into rows, grids and complex patterns to create unified compositions, and using bright primary colours to engage the viewer. She says, ‘As long as there are the arms of the small figure, then it is rational, as long as there is the small face with nose and eyes, they form the picture.’ Qin’s subject is society, the complex interrelationships of people and systems that she describes as “social structure.” One might imagine that her use of bright primary colours, and the play-doh tactile quality of her surfaces, would create cheerful works of child-like optimism. There is a much darker undercurrent here, however. Qin Fengling’s hundreds of little figures on each canvas are almost, but not quite, identical – a reminder of the collectivist ideology of her youth, a social structure that created obligatory conformist identities as obedient servants of the state and the Motherland. Here, in Red, the rows and rows of tiny soldiers with their rifles present an ironic juxtaposition between their toy-like appearance and the reality of military strength.
Accession number
2007.067