Qin Feng (1961)

Unleashed Force

Qin Feng’s paintings erupt with a kind of volcanic, primordial force. As one of the pioneers of the China’s Avant-Garde movement in the 1980s, Qin was among the first contemporary Chinese artists to radically expand the role of calligraphy, transforming it from a formal, disciplined tradition into a vehicle for raw, gestural abstraction.

What makes his works so compelling is precisely this fusion: the ancient bones of calligraphic structure collide with the liberated movements of Western Abstract Expressionism. The black ink strokes are sometimes explosive, sometimes meditative. They carry the spiritual weight of script, yet they behave like living matter, swelling and recoiling across paper and canvas. The looping lines of red pigment introduce a restless opposing force, like nerves firing across the surface.

There is also an elemental quality rooted in Qin Feng’s early life as a shepherd on the Xinjiang’s grasslands. That landscape, vast and untamed, seems to reverberate through his brushwork: the sweep of wind, the surge of weather, the pulse of open space. His practice absorbs that primal sensibility and unleashes it in marks that feel both ancient and urgently contemporary.

Across these works, Qin’s gestures do not merely reference calligraphy; they reinvent its purpose, asserting it as a universal language of movement, energy, and becoming.

November 2025