Wang Yi Zhou

Courtesy of the artist - Wang Yi-zhou; Mountain, 2022; Oil on canvas; 27.56 x 19.69 in. (70 x 50 cm.)

Wang Yi-zhou (b. 1969), born in Jiangsu, currently lives in Shanghai and is a professional full-time artist. He studied successively at Huaiyin Normal University (淮阴师范学院) and Tianjin Academy of Fine Arts (天津美术学院).

In his childhood, he inherited his family's education in Chinese calligraphy, Chinese painting, and ancient literature. He is one of the earliest Chinese artists to study and research Huang Bin-hong (黄宾虹) and majored in oil painting at university. Currently, his works convey his artistic spirit through various media, skills, and techniques.

Wang has devoted more than 30 years of study of ancient Chinese humanities and philosophy; the comparison of ancient culture and contemporary culture; study the comparison of Chinese and Western art, and put forward the concept of minimalist expressionism in the artistic spirit of Chinese calligraphy, freehand painting, minimalism, abstraction, expressionism, etc.

His works are full of humanistic sentiments in simple lines and colors, which expressing the inner spirit of simplicity, generalization, solitude, and detachment with mountains, water, lotus, and tree as creative materials, which combines writing, expression, artistic conception, and composition presented in a humanistic way, generalize things into approximate symbolic languages yet full of improvisational poetry, that is an essential expression of "Affective Imagery" in Chinese culture.

The Yi Jing (易經) deeply inspired his artistic ideas, causing his works to be abstract rather than abstract, there are unexpected changes in everything under control, giving a power of vastness, depth, distance, and calmness.