Fang Lijun is one of the most renowned contemporary artists in China who also gains worldwide recognition. From 1st May at Xi’an Art Museum, Fang Lijun is going to hold a solo exhibition entitled “From Symbol to Analysis.”

This exhibition consists of about 260 pieces of work divided into four major components: 12 representative oil paintings on both large and medium canvases, 9 sculpture installations, 222 pieces of "experimental group painting series" which he has worked on from 2008 and 14 wash paintings. Distributed in two exhibition halls, this exhibition gives a comprehensive record of his creations of paintings, installations and videos.

Born in 1963 in Handan, Hebei Province in China, Fang graduated from the Department of Printmaking at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1989. He now lives and works in Beijing. As one of the most important representatives of the new artistic trend of Post 89, Fang Lijun and other artists of this trend jointly created a unique mode of discourse –"Cynical Realism", which is represented by "Bald Ruffian" that belongs to Fang’s series of works which have been created since 1988. This image has become a classical symbol, marking the widespread social, emotional and psychological feelings of the times from the end of the 1980s to the first half of the 1990s. Among his creations in recent years which started around 2008, are a series of ideological changes and an accumulation of mature works, into which he puts thoughts of life and artistic perception along with a variety of possibilities of creation in the metaphorical work that are part of his experimental series.

A number of “Pictorial Discourses” with significant changes in continuous growth have been constructed by this approach of “word and expression”. Not only can it be understood as the mixture and lay out of figurative elements in his new abstract thinking, but also it can be taken as the three-dimensional rendering of sociology and semiotics. Thus, the exhibition entitled "From Symbol to Analysis" endeavors to give a comprehensive presentation of Fang Lijun’s artistic thought and it is also the largest solo exhibition of Fang’s in recent years. The most important element of this exhibition is the new work which took Fang Lijun 3 years in the concept of city to compose and is still ongoing. It is another huge work created in recent years and is regarded as a milestone in his art career.