1. Gaby Velez Art History 2 Contemporary Artist

6. “ In Zhou Fan’s newest series, often tentacles of the jellyfish are dangling down from the women’s headwear, and in one painting the tentacles are reaching down, holding up an object in front of a woman, like a carrot held on a stick in front of a donkey. The various, twisted tentacles could be said to represent the complications of life and how twists and entanglements of even small things can tie people down. But also, they are simply the result of wearing a hat made of jellyfish! Zhou Fan likes to combine the impossible, and while it looks beautiful within the paintings, the results can be confusing and chaotic-seeming.”

13. Zhou Fan has been very inspired by his childhood. He has always had a strong fascination for jellyfish. His series, “Love of Jellyfish” are paintings based on his dreams that he had as a young boy of many jellyfish floating in the sky and then would fall down to the ground and become mushrooms. These Dreams had a strong impact on him and he remembers them vividly.

15. “ In another series of paintings, Zhou Fan paints a fat boy, with many moles and a big tire-ring of fat around his neck. The series is titled: “Teacher, I won’t do it again”. The fat boy is crying, and he has a band-aid on his finger, which has clearly been bleeding. In some of the paintings in the series, the boy has a candy in his hand; presumably, the boy has been eating too much candy and the teacher scolded him, so he is crying. This subject-matter, too, harks back to Zhou Fan’s childhood, when he had a very fat classmate in school who could not stop eating candies. Zhou was sympathetic towards the boy and felt bad when teachers were harsh to his fat classmate. Even Zhou’s classmates were mean to the boy and picked on him a lot.”-Article

16. “ Love Song”

21. My interpretation of this painting is the women is feeling a kind of heavy burden. The objects on her head seem to be taking over her and now she is not able to control what she is doing or thinking. Since Zhou is affected by the effects of society, this image could reflect how this girl’s perspective how she is affected by society.