You Jin China, b. 1979

You Jin was born in October 1979 in Shenyang, in the Liaoning province of northeast China, and lives and works in Beijing. He began painting at a very young age and went on to study graphic design, video making, and three-dimensional technology at the Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts in his native city, graduating in 2005. Though his formal training was rooted in multimedia and design, painting remained his central preoccupation throughout, and in the years following his graduation he committed fully to it as his primary medium. 

You Jin's practice is grounded in a sustained philosophical inquiry into the relationship between Eastern and Western ways of seeing. Like traditional Chinese landscape painters, he approaches his surroundings with a deeply observational eye, attuned to the constant flux of urban space and the seemingly endless possibilities it offers to painting. At the same time, his work engages directly with the formal legacy of Western modernism, treating the canvas as a space of dialogue between two distinct pictorial and philosophical traditions. He applies elements of traditional Chinese culture and iconography within a painterly language that is unmistakably contemporary: his canvases are characterised by saturated, almost hallucinogenic colour, layered surfaces, and a technical mastery that has drawn comparisons to both Eastern ink painting and Western expressionism. For You Jin, the painted image is a means of registering the instability of modern life, the way circumstances shift and reshape human experience in ways that resist fixed interpretation. 

His work has been presented in significant institutional and commercial contexts across Asia and Europe. Exhibition highlights include a solo presentation at BANK/MABSOCIETY in Shanghai in 2018, a solo show at Alternative Space Loop in Seoul, and auction appearances at Christie's, where his work has been featured in dedicated editorial coverage. His paintings have been reviewed in China Daily, among other publications.

KORNFELD Galerie Berlin presented You Jin in the solo exhibition Metaphor at 68projects by KORNFELD in Berlin in 2021, bringing his work to a European audience for the first time in a dedicated solo context. The exhibition foregrounded his approach to urban observation and his fusion of Eastern and Western philosophical frameworks, positioning him within an international conversation about the role of painting in a rapidly changing world.

You Jin's practice continues to evolve in response to the conditions of contemporary urban life, sustained by a commitment to painting as a form of philosophical inquiry and cross-cultural dialogue.