Gao Fei is one of the most creative and prolific within a new generation of contemporary ink artists in China. His ink and color works display traditional brushwork techniques and imagery, yet are unmistakably contemporary in palette, composition, and subject matter.

Recurrent in both of Gao Fei’s paintings in the sale are vibrant hues and a sense of human disorder. In Admist Flowers (Lot 93), darkly robed men find themselves against a psychedelic pink backdrop and situated into cells formed by black and grey inkwash that blooms across the painting like a maze. Peony flowers, lingbi garden rocks, and bald figures in various attitudes all become abstract symbols in the highly geometric painterly space.

Gao evokes, or even parodies, traditional Chinese aesthetics and themes once again in Date with an Angel (Lot 96), which depicts a rooftop scene of curved tiled roofs, clouds, and sky found also in the classical painting attributed to Song Dynasty Emperor Huizong’s Auspicious Cranes. However, in Gao’s version, the elegant inflight birds are replaced by a hectic vision of men flung aimlessly into the air and a red seal that reads “living among the people.”