Wang Jieyin, Landscape BT, 2024. Mixed media on paper, 153×186cm.
Asia Art Center presents "Accretions: The Art of Wang Jieyin" in Beijing. Unveiled on November 22, 2025, this exhibition marks the artist's second solo show at Asia Art Center (Beijing), following "Boundless Sky: Recent Ink Paintings of Wang Jieyin" in 2020 after a five-year interval. The exhibition is academically moderated by Pi Daojian and curated by Fang Zhiling. It features over thirty recent works by the artist Wang Jieyin, among which half of them are new works from the Landscape series since 2023, while the artist's long-standing Dotted Scenery series characterized by distinctive ink dots are also included. These ink and wash paintings, together with three new oil paintings from the Journey to Visit the Antiquity series, collectively outline the artistic realm that Wang Jieyin has pursued with innovation and freedom for more than sixty years.
Portrait of Wang Jieyin
Wang Jieyin, an artist born in Shanghai in 1941, graduated from Shanghai Fine Arts Training Class in 1966. In 1986, Wang Jieyin went abroad for studying prints in Vienna National University of Applied Arts, Vienna, Austria. Wang currently works as a professor of Shanghai University’s College of Fine Arts since 1996.
As a senior artist born in Shanghai in the 1940s, Wang Jieyin's artistic creation has always been rooted in the context of traditional Chinese art. He is a comprehensive master of printmaking, oil painting, ink painting, as well as other forms and languages. With continuing enthusiasm and persistence in art, he keeps injecting updated energy into Chinese ink painting, reshaping ancient visual languages to correspond to the contemporary aesthetic taste. He demonstrates a deep sensitivity to traditional painting, which he reinterprets through a speculative and transformative approach. By transposing classical visual sensibilities into a contemporary language, he forges a new artistic structure that powerfully challenges tradition. His imagery is defined by strong, clear forms, yet it also possesses an expansive, almost fluid quality. This combination creates a dynamic unity between visual intensity and innate elegance.
Wang Jieyin, The Jiangnan Garden BJ, 2023. Mixed media on paper, 204×186cm.
Wang Jieyin, Landscape BA, 2023. Mixed media on paper, 204×248cm.
Wang has titled his new exhibition Accretions (Ji Chu). Chu is an elegant archaic term for paper, and Ji points not only to the layered state of pasted paper but also to the action and process of mounting itself. The title according to the curator Fang Zhiling, thus reflects the artist’s affinity for traditional culture while embedding a complex and profound artistic expression infused with craftsmanship of labor and its results. This way of embedding meaning is profoundly suggestive: the process of mounting paper resonates with the process of carving and printing; and the substitution of impersonal (wu wo) material impressions for emotionally revealing hand-drawn strokes is also part of the printmaker’s unique aesthetic disposition. Here, however, rather than a return to the artist’s printmaking sensibilities, it is better understood as the natural convergence between the unadorned, tranquil, and selfless genes of Chinese aesthetics and the intrinsic ethos of printmaking.
Wang Jieyin, Landscape BQ, 2024. Mixed media on paper, 186×102cm.
Wang Jieyin, Landscape BH, 2023. Mixed media on paper, 186×102cm.
Wang Jieyin, Landscape BW, 2024. Mixed media on paper, 204×186cm
Wang Jieyin, Landscape BY, 2024. Mixed media on paper, 204×248cm.
Wang Jieyin, Scenery of Mountains No. 2, 2023. Mixed media on paper, 140×350cm.
"If the 'new artistic realm' Wang Jieyin has forged since the turn of the century is the result of the synthesis of his manifold life experiences and wide-ranging artistic explorations, then the new forms of 'landscape'—or 'scenery'—assembled from specially made 'paperboard' that Accretions designates are a concentrated expression of his ever-expanding artistic vision, increasingly unrestrained creative attitude, and ever more essentialized aesthetic pursuit," said Fang Zhiling, curator for this exhibition.
Wang Jieyin, Journey to Visit the Antiquity No. 1, 2025. Oil on canvas, 60×80cm.
Wang Jieyin, Journey to Visit the Antiquity No. 2, 2025. Oil on canvas, 60×80cm.
Wang Jieyin, Journey to Visit the Antiquity No. 3, 2025. Oil on canvas, 60×80cm.
Wang does not cling to artistic expressions that are ethereal, spontaneous, or stylistically pronounced; instead, through layer upon layer of unadorned, tranquil, and nearly selfless traces, he allows “landscape” or “scenery” to emerge—faint, pared-down, yet quietly resonant. Fang expressed that he was more inclined to call them “stratified inner landscape”: Whether it is “shan-shui” in Chinese traditional culture, “landscape” in Western painting, or the commonly used “scenery” in contemporary culture, these “low-pictorial” visual images are difficult to define. They resemble the natural outgrowth of the artist’s accumulated inner sensibilities, indeed conveying a realm that is simultaneously pared-down and profoundly rich.
Wang Jieyin, Dotted Scenery No. 6, 2017. Ink on paper, 69×138cm.
Wang Jieyin, Dotted Scenery No. 8, 2021. Ink on paper, 69×137cm.
As Wang Jieyin once wrote in Miscellaneous Notes on Painting, "Being a Chinese artist means being a global person; it does not really matter what your ethnic identity is. Creating paintings that are very 'Western' is also perfectly acceptable. Of course, one can also be very 'Chinese,' letting the ethnic genes in one's bones flow freely. I just do not quite agree with deliberately flaunting globalization or nationalism to achieve a certain effect, as that can easily become shallow showmanship." The artist's deconstruction and transformation of the expressove system of traditional Chinese literati painting does not fall into a binary choice of "internationalization" or "nationalization." Instead, he continues with a spirit of independent exploration, practicing the artistic stance he has always maintained.
Wang Jieyin, Dotted Image No. 9, 2022. Ink on paper, 70×69cm.
Wang Jieyin, Dotted Image No. 11, 2022. Ink on paper, 65×69cm.
Wang Jieyin, Dotted Image No. 29, 2022. Ink on paper, 68×68cm.
About the Exhibition
Dates: 22 November 2025 - 8 February 2026
Venue: Asia Art Center, Beijing
Courtesy of the Artist and Asia Art Center, edited by CAFA ART INFO.
