Guo Fengyi
Living her spirituality along the paths of Qi-gong, it was at the dawn of her 40th birthday that Guo Fengyi began to reinterpret popular Chinese beliefs in ink and brush drawings. On rolls of rice paper, sometimes measuring up to 10 meters, entities unfold.
Sometimes akin to The Pantheon, sometimes to pandemonium, they seem to float in a space-time void. These heretical scrolls were exhibited at the 55thVenice Biennale, curated by Massimiliano Gioni and in 2023, during the exhibition Chrysalide : le rêve du papillon at the Center of Contemporary Art of Genève .
Guo Fengyi was born in Xi’an (China) in 1942 and found work in a rubber factory.
However, severe bouts of arthritis forced her to give up her career at the age of thirty-nine. In the hope of alleviating her symptoms, she turned to alternative medicine and found a new spiritual path in Qi-Gong.
Beyond the magnetism exuding from her pieces, we face the inevitable question linked to art brut: is there an art form that isn’t cultural or cultic?
Her works are featured in the Collection d’Art Brut in Lausanne, the Museum of Everything in London, and the Centro de Arte Oliva in Portugal.
Preface : Rong Zheng
Foreword : Christian Berst
Catalog published to mark the exhibition Guo Fengyi : a chinese rhapsody, from december 10th, 2010 to january 15th, 2011.