The Paintings’ Breath

Heike Gaessler, Berlin

When looking at Qin Feng’s paintings anew, I try to find out what exactly creates the strange fascination they hold for me. It is not easy to put in words the impressions, the feelings, and the thoughts that these paintings leave in me. It is as if they speak their own and personal language and are communicating from an intimate underlying level.

Therefore rational knowledge cannot grasp the spiritual content of these paintings. Qin Feng’s paintings tell about the inner self of the painter. His breath that forms every brushstroke, speaks the language of the body, the feelings, and the mind. The brushstrokes represent the inner condition, the experiences, passions in a play between the in- and outside. The inner voice of the painting contacts the viewer and communicates to her/him. Desire, sex, love, restlessness, death, captivation, devotion—all scream out of the painting.

The animal in the inner self is expressed in an impetuous and unbridled way. This sometimes takes shape in the suffering and the pent-up aggressive energy of the captive, sometimes in the struggle for life’s energy of the injured, and other times in sexual energy, ecstasy, passionately blasting dynamic, and in a strong emotional explosion. Then, in other paintings he creates a meditative silence, which shrouds the observer deeply.

Qin Feng expresses passions with great honesty. The paintings show different layers. In most cases, the basic structure is a framework, a cage, a strict structure. Another layer shows what the first level contains: a force that wants to break free, that wants to burst something or that simply transforms and acts beyond the structure.

Harmony and injury are in a contrast, and only in their polarity do they unite to the integral whole of the picture. In some works this polarity is continued through the choice of the technique. What seem to be opposites get in contact with each other; they unite to a whole, while staying diametrically opposed. For example, when classical drawing in classical Chinese watercolor is combined with oil painting, or when silk and paper—the traditional Chinese grounding—are combined with linen.

A large part of the colorfulness results from the subtle use of ink. Light, dark, constant, or decreasing tones of watercolor are brought to life through the different techniques of his brushwork. His “black” has many nuances. With this one neutral color he brings out all the different moods of the painting. Compared to Qin Feng’s ink drawing, his application of colored paints is often secondary or it includes symbolic components.

The paintings talk to the viewer on different levels. Even one who withdraws from the strongly emotional structure of his expressive paintings will find elaborated signs, which are Chinese characters from one of the eight styles of Chinese calligraphy. His use of Chinese calligraphy, which goes from early to modern forms of expressions, finds its way to the art of modern painting, bringing an additional dimension into his works. Painting and calligraphy complement one another. The Chinese characters belong to one of the most complicated and fascinating writing systems in the world. Every single character creates lively images and abstract ideas in the viewer and has several different meanings. Traditionally, the Chinese technique of calligraphy, which does not allow any corrections or use of a same stroke twice and which demands complete mastery of the brushstrokes, is also the introduction to painting. It is in many ways connected with it.

One of Qin Feng’s characteristic stylistic elements is the expression of haziness. From this the paintings draw their strength. Figures stay strangely shapeless, they move within a transition of birth or disintegration, they are in an effervescent flow.

In keeping his figures shapeless, Qin Feng gives them space and freedom. He allows associations and makes them possible. He plays with the dissolving of structures. His figures transform from humans to animals to spirits. He not only paints the human shape, but also the surrounding aura, the radiation of a person in a comprehensive perception. Some things are exact, others again stay more in shadow or simply open. Qin Feng’s paintstroke is open and wide. It does not close. Woven in strict and steady structures, holes and ways to get out can be found. Straight lines suddenly become round and the chosen structure varies slightly.

The paintings do not describe a fixed moment in time, but a wide and open period of time, where change is imminent. There is not a clear setting of a limit, but its lifting, that includes the language of intuition or of the sensual and the subconscious.

The paintbrush plays an important role. Qin Feng’s brushstroke is very original and fluent. Soft outlines, for example, stand in contrast to a strong, upgoing vertical or a dynamic horizontal brushwork.

Qin Feng has a sharp observation of reality. He looks at the world with all his senses, while using fragments of these very complex images for visual creation. Playfully, he quotes reality in a few strokes. Still, Qin Feng’s paintings are in no way a reproduction of reality. Rather, they come from the heart and the soul that manifest in each brushstroke.

His art appeals to the spirit as well as to the intuition. He communicates by means of language and goes beyond it. This way the most inner sensations of the painter are expressed. It is the breath and the aura of his spirit radiating from the painting that finds response in the observer and pulls him/her into the soul of the painting.