One Man’s Market Economy: On Zhu Fadong
By Yang Wei

In early 1993, artist Zhu Fadong, in distant Kunming, made a piece of work called Announcement of a Missing Person. The work was in the form of a standard small ad pasted on surfaces found everywhere in the street. The small ad created by Zhu was about the artist himself - a missing person, and asked those with information to kindly get in touch. What amused me about this piece was the photograph of Zhu Fadong himself in the advert. With a peaked cap on his head and long hair flanking down to his shoulders he looked rather heroic and indomitable. The work left a strong impression on me when I first saw it in a book from the Contemporary Art Series edited by Sun Ping. It somehow captured a sense of confusion I was experiencing myself at that time. Some time before the creation of this work, Deng Xiaoping’s 1992 southern tour speech managed to propel the entire nation towards a kind of wholesale economic transformation. In the midst of that turbulent change, all the cultural ideals that had been guiding artists through the eighties quickly became devalued. All of a sudden, what used to be held dear melted into thin air. The future was uncertain, and the world unpredictable. Zhu Fadong’s work conveyed the zeitgeist of that fleeting moment - a moment of overwhelming change. On the one hand, his Missing Person ad seemed like an evocation ritual calling back the cultural spirit of the lost eighties. On the other hand, it also felt like an adamant resolution to reinvent a brand new self in a brand new economically driven society. What was clear however was the ambivalent message sent out by this piece of work. It somehow made me clearly aware of the historical transformation that was quietly sneaking through into the very fabric of our lives…

It was not until 1994 that I first saw Zhu Fadong himself. That year, he left his hometown of Kunming and arrived in Beijing. He brought his other work, This Person is For Sale, with him to this densely populated metropolis. I met him in Liu Yanjia’s home in Yuanmingyuan. By then, Zhu had already cut off the unrestrained long hair I had seen him wearing in his photograph. He was dressed in a blue work outfit with words ‘This Person is For Sale’ printed on the back. I remember, we talked about him for a long while after he left. The reason was that Zhu Fadong’s image at that time was very congruent with this idea of ‘This Person is For Sale’. He clearly had a very sharp artist acumen. But even sharper was his understanding of the consumer era – so sharp that it could be a mirror for our self reflection.

Shu Fadong did not return to Yuanmingyuan, but news about him was nonetheless easily available. I learned that he produced many works afterwards, such as The Last Employment of Zhu Fadong, Identity Card, etc. All in all, his works were all closely related to facets of social life. They all delved into big questions about life.

In the late nineties, many artists still adrift in Beijing ended up in Tongzhou on the outskirt of the city, including myself and Zhu Fadong. As a result of physical proximity, Zhu and I began to know each better. I gradually got to know many more interesting works by him. These included the series of works on sulphate paper to be presented in this coming show at F2 Gallery in Beijing.

Zhu Fadong got his inspiration for this series from industrial design drafting. Because of its characteristic translucent texture, sulphate paper is often used for the tracing of images and graphics. I am not entirely sure how Zhu Fadong came to know of the material. But I know that he has been using it in his works for quite a while. Perhaps the choice of material was dictated by the contents he sought to express in his art. In other words, in order to duplicate a large quantity of advertising images, he needed a material that worked well both in copying and the further adaptation of copied images. And sulphate paper seemed to be the solution, and was therefore chosen by the artist to develop his new artistic language. It reminds me that when it comes to artistic expression, the issue of how to express matters more than what to express. The clarity and effect of artistic expression cannot be achieved before the artist figures out how to convey his/her ideas.

Zhu Fadong’s sulphate paper series has not diverged significantly from the clichéd borrowing of logos or adverts of trans-national companies. As a symbol of commercial society, these logos have been widely used by a long list of pop artists for representing the spirit of our time. This is an old story to me. But Zhu Fadong’s works manage to breathe a whiff of fresh air into the old cliché. This is of course linked to the images he chose for his works. But more importantly, the way he decided to ‘process’ the borrowed images made all the difference. Instead of standard copying, he breaks logos into minuscule fragments – a technique reminiscent of embroidering. Obviously this innovative technique adds layers of richness into these trans-national logos. But even more importantly, Zhu Fadong’s arduous labour seems to have painted a gloss of humanity on to the cold and inhumane logos.

In fact, Zhu Fadong’s works, from past to present, have all been characterised by a central theme – the relation between man and consumer society. Different artists hold different critical attitudes on the issue. Zhu Fadong’s attitude leans towards neutral, or even ambiguity. He never seems to take a dogmatic stance on the matter. He is more willing to understand and empathize. Instead of an outright attack on prevalent depravity, he chooses to bury himself in the socio-psychological depth of our time, hoping to uncover a trace of humanity that sheds light on different facets of life. In my opinion, this is what lies at the core of Zhu Fadong’s art. This is what sets it apart.

Written in Tongzhou, 11 December 2007

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