Introduction

Han Feng, b.1972, currently lives and works in Berlin & Shanghai. His work involves multiple mediums, such as painting, and installation. His works are often inspired by daily objects, exploring the abstract structure of the objects themselves on the canvas， or translating the understanding of the structure into the installations, to show the traditional and natural phenomena in continued evolution. His works attempt to express their daily reflective rules via the recording of the process and construct more spaces for different cognitive gatherings in the presentation of his works.

In 2010, Han Feng won the first prize of "the 1st John Moores New Painting Prize", in Shanghai. In 2011, his works were exhibited in "the 3rd Biennial at the End of the World", Ushuaia, Argentina. In 2012, Han had a solo exhibition in the Centre for Chinese Contemporary Art, in Manchester, U.K. In 2013, his important works were shown in the "Aichi Triennale", Japan and Saatchi Gallery, London, U.K. In 2015, his works were in the "CHINA 8" show in Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Germany. His works, in recent years, were in the global art fairs multiple times, for example, the Art Basel in Switzerland, Hong Kong, and Miami, U.S.A, the Frieze Art Fair in London, U.K., etc.

Recent exhibitions include: Painting: Contemporary Landscape, Shanghai Jin-chen Yifeiming Art Gallery, Shanghai (2023); Forming Communities: Berliner Wege, KINDL - Centre for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany (2022); My Casa, AD, Shanghai (2022); Endless Moment, WS SPACE, Shanghai (2022); the 10th Anniversary Tour Exhibition of John Moores Painting Prize (China) 2021, Chongqing, Wuhan, Nanjing, Yantai, (2021); From Now On, L’Achat Belle, Berlin, Germany (2021); Punk, Glory & Dekadenz, Hipp-Halle, Gmunden, Austria (2021); Entre 4 Yeux, M68, Berlin, Germany (2020); Darkbreak, The Barn Contemporary Art Space, Shenzhen (2019); The Poem Simply Rising, Wuxi Museum, Wuxi (2019); Art Patrons, Qiao Space & Tank Shanghai Project Space, Shanghai (2018); Han Feng: Somewhere, ShanghART Beijing (2017); This Moment, Liu Haisu Art Museum, Shanghai (2017).

Each picture is a representation. They represent things: a ventilation tube, staircases, blinds, a ventilator, an airplane, a chimney, a bus… The things stand in isolation from the picture, detached from any context. These are unspectacular things, in unspectacular stages, and that is precisely why they become spectacular in the picture: they become noteworthy. Han Feng is not interested in the thing, the object as such, he is interested in the thing and the object in the picture and as a picture. The same thingness also characterizes the pictures as pictures, which are both things and signs, they are not frames, and they appear “unfinished”, emphasizing the fact that they are the result of a production process. They are mounted canvas that makes the folds and the small sides on the massive wooden frame visible and capable of being experienced. The artist produces everything himself: handicraft. He chooses a  canvas which a knobbly structure that emphasizes the materiality of the ground on which the lucid painting is layered. The tactility of such surfaces affection can immediately be felt. Together with the thingness of the picture, it conveys stability of the picture of the canvas, giving the impression that the pictures are lit from the behind-an arrangement which Feng stages deliberately for some of his objects in space: objects with the effect of pictures that have entered space. (Jorg Huber)

Paintings and sculptural installations are unseen, represented by photographs sent from a distance. Both recall the characteristic formalities of Westernized minimalism-conceptualism: monochromatic washes on white grounds, sometimes accented by restrained applications of color (light blue and yellow); rectangular supports tending towards square; extended horizontal geometric forms; and the presentation of industrially produced objects are ready-mades. Most of the paintings depict aspects of the connective machinery of contemporary urban life- the visually unremarkable outlets of air conditioning and heating systems, with their slats, cowls, and partly obscured grilled- perhaps as a visual pun on works by the likes of Robert Ryman and Donald Judd. (Paul Gladston)