[Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Contemporary artist Fang Lijun’s painting of "bold head" series, 1996.4, will lead a contemporary art sale in Hong Kong in early April.

The oil painting to be sold in Sotheby’s saleroom portrays the back of a bold-headed man against a backdrop of vast sea. It conveys the emptiness, loneliness and boredom that reflect the collective mental status of the Chinese in the 1990s.

Fang created and revisited the motif of bold-headed hooligan, a symbol of the Cynical Realism movement of the Chinese contemporary art scene. The trademark bold-headed man laughs, cries or swims in Fang’s many works, giving a unrealistic and absurd touch.

Other works to go under the hammer include paintings, videos ad photos of leading artists such as Wang Guangle, Yu Youhan and Jia Aili