Ethan Cohen Fine Arts is pleased to present Qin Feng The Alchemist, a solo exhibition featuring Qin Feng’s most recent oil paintings. This will be Qin Feng’s third solo exhibition at Ethan Cohen Fine Arts.

His drive for experimentation has encouraged him to move beyond his practiced medium of ink on paper to explore oil painting. In his new oil paintings, Qin Feng mixes his oil paints with various mixed medias producing a luscious and slick quality to the paint. Through this manipulation of medium, he is able to transfer the effect and the power of ink painting to oil painting. His broad and energetic brushstrokes continue to dominate his canvases. Exploiting the brilliant colors available to oil painters, Qin Feng introduces colors in electric blues, vibrant yellows, and hot pinks in addition to his black on white paintings.

Qin Feng began his formal training in traditional Chinese ink painting at the Academy of Applied Arts in Shandong receiving his degree in mid- 1980’s before the emergence of the Chinese avant-garde. During this period, Qin Feng was one of the artists who experimented with major Western modern art styles. However, he soon realized that these techniques were not for him. He found that he drew on the creative energy of the ink and paper. In a written statement, he declares, (I) deeply loves the two-dimensional world of ink and paper. Since 1991, he has traveled to Europe and was invited to hold solo exhibitions in Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Portugal. Finally, he settled in Berlin, Germany in 1996. His experiences during those years greatly shaped his artistic direction, transforming him into a conceptual artist and encouraging his desire to experiment with a variety of ink art methods and oil painting techniques.

Qin Feng’s playful nature and heightened awareness of nature influences his art making process. As a child growing up in Xinjiang in the North West China, Qin Feng remembers that his need to create with organic materials began at an early age, writing: “When I was herding sheep on the prairie and when painting and drawing on paper was not enough for me, I would pick up the sickle and make paths in the grass and connect them into nonsymmetrical figures.” A restless spirit, Qin Feng draws on his understanding of his chosen medium to generate works of power, significance, and spontaneity.