Transform - 2

Xue Feng's landscape paintings incorporate his reflections on visual imagery and cultural psychology. In his Transform series, the artist's inspiration for the scenery portrayed is taken from the city in which he lives, Hangzhou. The dense foliage in the painting not only distances the observer from the distractions of the riotous city, it also delimits a corner in the artist's memory. The focus of the work is hardly the objectively existing plants; rather, the artist is merely using the scenery and objects in the painting to convey a kind of spiritual experience. In his Transform-2 (Lot 105), Xue Feng uses chaotic patterns of colour to abstract and planarize the three-dimensional lush landscape. Short, powerful brushstrokes dance freely over the canvas as they brim with gorgeous, variegated colour, enveloping the radio in the fore ground with this joyous atmosphere. The intertwining lines resemble the sound waves sent out from a broadcast station, fundamentally reflecting the scenery that is continuously expanding in the artist's mind. Xue Feng unceasingly 'transforms' the landscapes in his memories, using this to experiment with the possibilities inherent to the unbounded expansion of a single visual image.