ART

The 1870 Art Center Gallery presents Dances With Shadows featuring Bay Area metal sculptor Feng Jin’s shadow sculpture series. Using simple metal rods, Jin produces strong figurative sculptures. Light casts a dynamic two dimensional shadow from the three dimensional figures. Jin will start a sculpture without any sketches and begin free hand cutting, rolling, bending, hammering, heating, grinding and welding sheet metal. Jin calls this technique “open minded sculpting”. When completed, the sculpture may have a natural, textural, high polish or patina finish. Jin’s sculpture is an intimate dialogue between a human and the boundless strength of metal, an expression of all the thoughts, emotions, dreams, passions, destinies and desires that constantly flow from his mind.

Feng Jen was born in Harbin,China. He received his Bachelor Of Arts Degree, with a major in sculpture, from the Central Institude of Fine Arts in Beijing. Jen was working in various metals, to produce abstract curves, when sculpting in metal was a very new technique in China’s art institutions. In 1998, he participated in designing and co-producing Goddess of Democracy. This statue was for the student movement in Tian-An-men Square. Jen now resides in the Bay Area and is concentrating on becoming a professional sculptor and producing sculptures of life, with an emphasis on the human form.