In his ink and watercolor paintings, Yun-Fei Ji explores and critiques China’s history, its contemporary society, and the ramifications of its government corruption. “I use landscape painting to explore the utopian dreams of Chinese history, from past collectivization to new consumerism,” explains Ji, who was trained in Song Dynasty (960–1279) landscape painting. Ji grew up on a collective farm during the Cultural Revolution, separated from his parents and listening to his grandmother’s ghost stories and folk tales. These experiences, as well as his observation of China’s current rampant industrialization, feed into his compositions. He works primarily in large scale, first making hundreds of individual drawings, which he then pins to his studio walls, allowing them to coalesce in his mind. Ghosts frequently appear in Ji’s works, serving as stand-ins for the human beings affected by the range of problems he addresses.
In his ink and watercolor paintings, Yun-Fei Ji explores and critiques China’s history, its contemporary society, and the ramifications of its government corruption. “I use landscape painting to explore the utopian dreams of Chinese history, from past collectivization to new consumerism,” explains Ji, who was trained in Song Dynasty (960–1279) landscape painting. Ji grew up on a collective farm during the Cultural Revolution, separated from his parents and listening to his grandmother’s ghost stories and folk tales. These experiences, as well as his observation of China’s current rampant industrialization, feed into his compositions. He works primarily in large scale, first making hundreds of individual drawings, which he then pins to his studio walls, allowing them to coalesce in his mind. Ghosts frequently appear in Ji’s works, serving as stand-ins for the human beings affected by the range of problems he addresses.