Lot 108: LENG JUN

B. 1963
FIVE POINTED STAR

51 1/8 by 51 1/8 in. 130 by 130 cm.

signed in Chinese and dated 99.3; signed in Chinese and titled in Chinese on the reverse

oil on canvas

EXHIBITED

Beijing, National Art Museum of China, China Realism, 2006, p. 140, illustrated in color

NOTE

Leng Jun was born in 1963 and graduated from the Wuhan Normal University Art Department in 1984. He remains in Wuhan today as the director of the Wuhan Painting Institute, where he is widely acclaimed as one of the finest hyper-realist painters of contemporary China.

Leng's Five Pointed Star (1999) is an important work within the artist's oeuvre and within the neorealist movement generally; the work was awarded top honors at the prestigious National Art Exhibition in China in 1999. As a composition, Five Pointed Star is direct: a basic five-pointed star, centrally positioned on a large, velvety black square canvas, an icon of geometric simplicity. The star appears to be made of bits of rough and rusty scrap metal, folded and soldered together, the beat up pieces fitted together by rudimentary handicraft and a chain that links some of the parts to make a unified whole.

The surface of Five Pointed Star is a tour de force of reflected light and minute imagistic detail, a consummate demonstration of the artist's extraordinary talents. The wrinkled, aged and battered surface of the star, with its crumpled edges and refractions of luminosity, clearly stands as a centrally important signifier of China - despite the battered condition of the star and the humble medium of its tromp l'oeil construction (discolored and discarded metal scraps) the star resiliently holds its form.