人生如戏

“Art is something that heals and touches our heart, a reflection of our life and dream. The tradition cultural performance, Peking Opera, portrays the present China which turns out to be an extraordinary fantasy. Isn’t life and art the same?”

Mei Lanfang, a premeditated subject Feng Ye portrays is a renowned Peking opera master who played over 180 female roles during his art career in the early 20th century, and was also an ardent cultural leader and socialist. Keeping the limitations and the impossibility of forming the past from the present in mind, Feng Ye stressed that his intention is not to stir viewers’ acts of recollection and reminiscence of Chinese opera master but to broadcast his thoughts of the growth in China and the spirit of the times by re-staging the impression of a legendary figure.

The structure of interpenetration and articulation in the flux of time, retracing steps from Mei Lanfang’s staged performances present the perception between past and present. Feng Ye re-examines the dimensions of time, transition of the generation, and relations between traditional Chinese calligraphy and the contemporary methods of painting – Feng Ye ingeniously translates the progression of cultural and political climate, current age of globalization in China and heightening charismatic of the Chinese classical into an exuberant figurative oil painting on large canvases.