PROVENANCE:
Imavision Gallery, Taipei
Private collection, Taiwan

With the artist's certificate of authenticity

Gongbi, within the school of realism in the context of traditional Chinese painting, its deviation, New Gongbi, is gaining attention from the public and realizing its value within the circle of art; with a group of artists injecting new life into it, creating a modernized version of this conventional style, and restoring it to its rightful place alongside the xieyi approaches more fashionable in Eastern art. Han Fei focuses on birds and flowers, an important subcategory of gongbi, and his work is marked by expert gouran, or bent brush, technique, smooth strokes, and a sublime palette that breathes a sort of understated charm. His imagery communicates a tranquil springtime atmosphere, a mood dripping with pleasant scents and soft, earthy tones. Through ingenious layering, his compositions superimpose their three basic elements—flowers, birds, and rocks—in a way that blends geometric and natural shapes into arrangements of astonishing visual impact. His oeuvre’s seemingly effortless elegance bespeaks the high degree of sophistication attained by this fervent artist.

In this lot, titled Bird on Rock, cool colors dominate in a scene that is brimming with countless enigmatic gradations of hue and shade, showing the artist’s keen eye for natural shapes and tones, as well as his superior compositional skills. Overall, this painting is a good example of Han Fei’s ambitious goal to rejuvenate his cultural heritage, imbuing it with subtle hints of Zen-like serenity, a calm and poise that is all the more apparent for the vibrant yet mellow imagery that so aptly reflects the artist’s inner world, making it eminently visible to a sympathetic audience. Most of Han’s best work was painted in recent years, marked by astute composition that cleverly distributes the broken-branch-style flowers and birds among carved railings and ornamental rocks. In particular, the taihu stones, also known as Chinese scholar’s rocks, with their close-up realism, and the parrots with their beautiful plumage, captured in most lifelike postures, are radiating energy and vitality. Han’s mature skill allows him to construct complex aesthetic concepts through which to develop and express his artistic temperament. The resultant pictures are very much a work of his individual imagination, yet they manage to pluck the nostalgic heartstrings of a wide audience, letting us enter a peaceful realm away from the bustle of the world, a quiet corner where classical elegance and poignant beauty soothe our senses.