Title: “Wax Figure Revealed” Leng Jun's wax figure contains his DNA?

Please answer in 3 seconds

Is this a photo or a painting?

Congratulations to those who answered the photo.

You got it wrong.

This is an oil painting

From the hyper-realist oil painter Leng Jun

In 2011, he painted “Little Ginger”

See the plush detailing on the sweater?

It's almost perverted.

However, this leading figure in Chinese contemporary hyper-realistic oil painting.

Had no formal training as a child

How did he become a master?

Welcome to the 44th installment of Curtain Call.

The curtain has risen, and our story has begun.

Leng Jun was born in 1963 in Dazhu County, Dazhou, Sichuan Province. 

He has been passionate about painting since he was a child and has a strong sense of art, and has never stopped painting for more than twenty years.

During his childhood, he showed a keen interest in traditional Chinese culture, such as opera, calligraphy and Chinese painting, despite having no formal art training. What really led him to the door of painting was a picture book. He was attracted to the wonderful images in the album and has been frantically trying to reproduce the characters in the painting perfectly ever since.

Due to the limitations of reality, Leng Jun didn't have professional drawing tools; brushes and paints were rare and expensive at that time, so he could only use pencils to describe the world in his mind. The posters of movie theaters became important objects for him to copy.

His family lived near the Xinhua Cinema, and every time he passed by, he would stop for a long time, trying to remember the details of the images on the posters. One time, the tiger in the poster aroused his special interest.

Because he was too young and timid to copy it in public, he could only look at it for a few moments, remember it in his mind, then run home to draw it, and then look at it again if it didn't look like it, and so on and so forth from the cinema to his home for many times, before he finally drew the tiger in its entirety. This experience not only greatly improved his ability to mime and memorize, but also made him develop the habit of perseverance.

Every day when he came home from school, he either immersed himself in drawing or ran to the movie theater to watch. In the long run, problems arose. Leng Jun began to see things in the distance become blurry, but he didn't care. It wasn't until he couldn't even see the faces of the plaster statues in the classroom that he told his family about the problem. Upon examination, his myopia had reached 500 degrees and he had to wear glasses.

Later, after failing to get into the high school, Leng Jun repeated his studies for one year and managed to get into the Physical Education and Art Department of the Hankou Branch of the then Wuhan Normal College. During his time at the school, as he took a two-year degree, he then often went out sketching early in the morning with a clip on his back and didn't return until dark.

▲The curtain opens on the waxwork “Leng Jun”.

In terms of painting style, he prefers delicate brushwork and realistic effects. Even though he was thus questioned and ridiculed by some university classmates who thought that he could only be a “painter” in the future, Leng Jun still insisted on taking his own path. He firmly believes that a painter should start from the feeling according to the subject matter and choose the appropriate expression, instead of creating in accordance with the textbook in a stereotypical way.

In 1984, Leng Jun's graduation work, Spring Buds, was selected for the 6th Provincial Art Exhibition and sent to the national competition. It was the first time for this unknown young man to make a name for himself in the art world.

In 1991, under the strong recommendation of Lu Baisen, the former president of Wuhan Painting Academy, Leng Jun was employed by Wuhan Painting Academy as a painter under contract outside the academy, and from then on, he started his professional art creation career.

▲  In 1999, the work “Pentagram” won the gold medal at the Ninth National Art Exhibition.

Since then, his works have appeared in many major exhibitions both at home and abroad, and he has won the Grand Prize of the National Art Exhibition for several times. 2007, his oil painting “The Phase of Portrait -- Xiao Luo” was selected for the 4th National Art Academy Exhibition, and also won the highest award “Art Academy Prize”. Not only that, most of Leng Jun's works have been collected by domestic and foreign art organizations and private individuals, and he has become a highly influential artist in China in recent years.

▲  Leng Jun's work “Mona Lisa - Design of a Smile

In the auction market, Leng Jun's works are also highly sought-after. on November 16, 2019, his Portrait of a Face - Xiao Jiang was sold for $70.15 million. on May 20, 2021, in the Contemporary Art Evening Session of China Guardian's Spring Auction 2021, his Mona Lisa - Designs of Smile was sold for $80.5 million, again setting a new auction record for his works. On May 20, 2021, in the evening session of China Guardian's Spring 2021 Contemporary Art Auction, his Mona Lisa - Design for a Smile fetched $80.5 million, once again setting a new auction record for his works.

▲  Leng Jun's Portrait - Xiao Jiang

Leng Jun's works are characterized by extreme realism and delicacy, capable of portraying the objects in such a vivid and breathtakingly detailed manner that they can even be compared to photographs. From the delicate skin of the characters to every strand of hair, from the fabric fibers of the clothes to every stitch, they are all expressed in a very distinctive way.

▲  Cold War Authorized Wax Figure Production

Let the wax figure have “DNA”, guess how many items on the wax figure of Mr. Leng Jun are “personal items” of Mr. Leng Jun?

Click on the blank to check the answer.

Hair, fingerprints, clothes.

And a chair!

(Yes, even the chair.)

▲The process of collecting cold army hairs

Hair is the tissue with DNA. When making the wax statue of Mr. Leng Jun, the hair and beard of Mr. Leng Jun were transplanted, which made Mr. Leng Jun call out, contributing to the art of wax statue and trying to go bald for the first time.

▲  Real Hand Turnover Mold

Not only that, the wax figure also has the same fingerprints and skin texture as Mr. Leng Jun's, by making a life-size replica of the hand.

Whether it is ultra-realistic oil paintings or ultra-realistic wax figures, all of them are pursuing a unique state that is delicate but not greasy, and realistic but not completely real.

▲Ms. Zhou Xuerong coloring the wax figure

When creating the wax figure, Mr. Leng Jun suggested to Ms. Zhou Xuerong, the founder of Elephant Oriental, that the clothing and accessories used for the wax figure should be those that have been worn by real people and have traces of their own movement, in order to make the work look more charming.。

▲The curtain opens on the waxwork “Leng Jun”.

Under the guidance of Mr. Leng Jun, the wax figure wears Mr. Leng Jun's clothes and accessories, and the expression of the wax figure restores the artist's eyes in the state of creation when he observes the whole of the thing in a false focus. As a result, the wax figure looks more like “DNA”.

About Mr. Leng Jun's waxwork

What other stories are there?

Let's take a look!

▲Click on the video to watch “Wax Figure Revealed”.