It’s a strange feeling one gets when faced with a pile of bruised, gnarled flesh mixed with an assortment of forbidden fruits, festering produce, and delicious-looking gummies. This is the kind of disorienting cornucopia that Christian Rex van Minnen brings to the table. Looking at these delicious varieties, we might be tempted to reach out and give them a squeeze. However, on second thought, maybe it’s best not to do this, lest we be willing to deal with the kind of contaminated residue that can’t be easily washed off.
Fan Mingning spent much of his life closely observing obscure details in the natural world, seeing correlations and expressions in places that might seem trivial to most people.
“I have always been a surrealist, finding endless joy in doodling and observing things as they appear, natural forms and suggestive physiology carrying supernatural emotional content beyond life itself,” says the California-based artist. In fact, he seemed to imbue his observations with a new dimension of life—at once familiar and unsettling, existing in another realm entirely. Intuiting this in-between world requires a certain degree of psychological engagement and interconnectedness with the internal and external environment. “I consider nature, tide pools and The Golden Field Guide to be foundational. My parents always focused my attention on nature and gave me the language and confidence to listen carefully to my heart and pursue inner knowledge,” he added.
Fan Mingnan is very specific about the way he creates his work – it is a deliberate process that, paradoxically, attempts to avoid deliberation. In painterly mode, he prefers a stream-of-consciousness approach, as in true Surrealism, while using technical devices to ultimately render a pleasing image. It seems to be a delicate balance, and he further explains, “My definition of Surrealism is that it begins with automatic drawing or marking. The emphasis is on physical movement and expediency rather than intellect and planning. Staying connected to the subconscious in this way is a lifelong practice, like meditation. It’s a fundamentalist view of Surrealism, and I rarely practice it perfectly. It’s usually some combination of this automatic process and conscious interaction.”
He keenly breaks it down into “a play between three points: one, intuition; two, counter-intuition creating a binary; and three, vertically creating a triangle, a ‘left field’ action that offers three general options in the act of creation. My paintings look like a combination of these three.”
Gazing at his flawless craftsmanship, we can’t help but wonder from what region of the subconscious his figures, whose features appear stained and possibly diseased, emerged. Did they drift in from a nightmare, or did they once walk the earth until they met with some serious bad luck?
“The Distortion of the Face assumes that a face is distorted, and what I try to do is, out of marking and familiarity, create an emotional human connection with a non-existent portrait. These three points come into play. In the context of portraiture, intuition is synonymous with visionary delusion, which is an intrinsic human behavior, Facial features can be picked out from things other than faces, like clouds, rocks, wood, etc. So counter-intuitive marks are marks that resist intuitive, utopian responses. It all comes down to brushwork, which is the vertical point, which is harder to pin down, but you know it when you see it (laughs).
Now that we understand some of the methodology behind his images, we’re led to another key question: What’s going on with all the fudge? Again, his explanation for this isn’t a casual, candy-pop-in-your-mouth kind of explanation, but a highly analytical one. “I can clearly illustrate how this subject plays out. In 2013 I continued to experiment with backgrounds and indirect painting techniques, more specifically the strengths/disadvantages of the Northern Renaissance method and the Italians. Namely Titian, who used mid-toned backgrounds as a starting point, allowing the artist to more easily change the position of the ongoing figures – essentially a technique that allowed more space to change things.”
