Zhang Fuming
100W x 120H cm
Woodblock Print
The Lucky Bamboo is heavily featured in the local context, be it in houses or businesses, as it is considered a symbol of growth, success, wealth, and luck. We see a man gently tending to the plant, having a quiet moment to himself in the library. This scene draws parallel to how White Jacket’s success has been flourishing and how the Founder continues to tend and take extra care of it. The flower pot has an uncanny appearance to a rice bowl, and this visual element is a constant reoccurrence in my work, as it represents a persons’ livelihood. The library scene signifies a quest for knowledge and learning, through an industry that is everchanging with trends.
ABOUT
Zhang Fuming is trained in the discipline of Printmaking and works with mediums largely of traditional origin. Favouring the direct and physical nature of printing mediums, it allows him to focus on the creation of imagery as an uninterrupted, direct means of communication with his audience. His heavy, expressive use of blacks and whites takes after the technique of influential German printmaker, Kathe Kollwitz who relies on bold, economical usage of blacks and whites to dramatise scenes of vulnerability, toil, and destitution. Fuming’s utilisation of large woodblocks, combined with an immersive black-white engagement – usually achieved through both rubbing and printing – heightens the stark emotional quality of his images and generates for his narratives a sense of weight and melancholy.
Fuming’s creative impulse of creating bold, black and white large format woodblock prints is synonymous with his artistic inclination, which is heavily influenced by the social realism movement along with its application of woodblock prints. Fuming particularly appreciates the manual process of creating prints through rubbing. Like his subjects, these methods are in keeping with his preference for a direct and efficient form of visual communication marked by an economy of means. Through his carvings, the artist hopes to inform by presenting objective narratives of daily life and encourages an investigation of the topics explored.
