Yuan Fang

November 18, 2025

Yuan Fang was born in Shenzhen, China, in 1996. She has already received numerous accolades and has participated in multiple solo and group shows around the world. In 2024, she was chosen for the 30 under 30 list by Forbes Asia and became the youngest artist to ever receive a solo exhibition at the Long Museum with her show, Flux. Other recent gallery exhibitions include Skarstedt, Chelsea (2025); Skarstedt, London (2024); Half Gallery, New York (2023); Prince & Wooster, New York (2022), and Hive Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, China (2021). Her work can be found in the permanent collections of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; Lafayette Anticipations, Paris; the FLAG Art Foundation, New York; Grand Rapids Art Museum, Grand Rapids, Michigan; Inima de Paula Museum, Belo Horizonte, Brazil; and the Long Museum, Shanghai, China, among others.

Can you talk a little bit about your practice, especially for those who aren’t familiar with your work?

I am an abstract painter. In my work, I seek to articulate the chaotic and impermanent relationships that exist between layers, forms, and gestures; an embodiment of the instability that defines contemporary human existence. The pictorial space I construct is one of tension and flux, where boundaries dissolve and reconstitute themselves in constant motion. Distorted, twisting curves emerge within these compositions, which to me evoke fragmented, abstracted “torsos” — traces of the human body that have been disassembled, absorbed, or entangled within the surrounding field of color and texture. These “figures,” neither fully present nor completely absent, exist in a state of suspension, mirroring the precariousness of identity and corporeality in an era of relentless transformation.

Through this ambiguous yet incisive visual language, I aim to convey the inevitability of our entanglement within the overwhelming currents of our time. My paintings become sites of negotiation between creation and dissolution, form and void, autonomy and surrender; reflecting the fragile equilibrium through which we continuously remake ourselves.

You recently had your second solo show at Skarstedt Gallery, Spaying. Can you tell us about the meaning behind the title?

While working on this exhibition, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Due to the nature of my illness, I am forced into menopause within the next five to ten years. When I first underwent genetic testing after the diagnosis, I was also informed that if certain genetic mutations were detected, I might need to remove my uterus and ovaries.

This confrontation with the possible loss of reproductive organs and fertility led me to title the exhibition “Spaying.” The word refers, quite literally, to the medical and biological condition of being deprived—temporarily or permanently—of reproductive capacity. For me, it embodies the unsettling intersection between medical necessity and the deeply gendered notions of womanhood and bodily autonomy.

At the same time, the title extends beyond the physical to reflect my process. Throughout my practice, I have often engaged with gestures of slicing, erasure, and subtraction. In this new series, I deliberately employ emptiness and negative space as active compositional elements. Each removal, each cut, becomes both a formal decision and a metaphorical act—an echo of the body’s own incisions, absences, and transformations.

In this new body of work, you utilized oil paint instead of your usual acrylic. What is the experience of using a new medium like? And, how does that impact the outcome?

Last summer, I began transitioning from acrylics to oil paint, a shift that fundamentally altered both my process and my perception of color. The most immediate and striking difference lies in the medium’s depth and complexity: oil allows for far richer chromatic relationships, where hues merge, collide, and transform with subtle gradations of tone. This expanded range enables me to construct more intricate layers—delicate yet incisive—through which light and texture unfold with greater nuance.

The slow-drying nature of oil paint has also redefined my rhythm of working. It resists immediacy, compelling me to move more deliberately, to pause, and to consider each adjustment as part of a longer temporal dialogue with the canvas. This deceleration is not merely technical but psychological. The supple blending of oils mirrors a transformation in my own state of being: a quieting of urgency, a reconciliation between impulse and contemplation. If painting with acrylics once embodied the intensity and restlessness of my temperament, working in oils reveals a more composed and meditative dimension of myself. It is as though the medium itself invites stillness—demanding patience, reflection, and an acceptance of time as a vital material within the act of painting.

During the creation of the show, you were going through a challenging health situation at the same time. How did your personal experience influence the work?

My practice has always been inseparable from my personal life. As I mentioned earlier, I was diagnosed with breast cancer while working on this exhibition. For me—a young woman with no family history of cancer, who neither smokes nor drinks, and exercises five or six times a week —this diagnosis was a profound shock and turning point. It compelled me to reflect deeply on questions of life, death, reproduction, and what it means to exist as a woman. On a physical level, each work created during my treatment took significantly longer to complete, as my body was weak and I had to rest a lot in the studio. Yet this also gave me more time to observe each piece and contemplate my next step.

On a psychological level, the experience of illness made me realize that I should no longer care so much about how others perceive me or my work. I used to be a deeply self-critical person; every exhibition filled me with pressure and anxiety about external judgment. But in preparing for this show, my attitude shifted toward a kind of liberation: “F**k it. I’ll paint what I love, and people can think whatever they want.”

I am always intrigued by how artists are able to find inspiration and then translate it into their work. What does that process look like to you?

My sources of inspiration are, in fact, highly varied and often arise in unpredictable ways—from the lyrics of Bryan Ferry and Serge Gainsbourg, to moments from my personal life, to a recently-installed red painting by Arshile Gorky at MoMA. I also draw from the cinematic language of films such as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Lust, Caution, as well as from fleeting encounters with light and shadow—like those I experienced last autumn at the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin.

None of these references appear directly in the imagery of my paintings. Rather, they form an undercurrent of emotion, rhythm, and atmosphere that informs the sensibility of my work. What moves me is not the literal subject, but the resonance of these experiences—their capacity to stir something indistinct yet profound within me, which then finds expression through abstraction.

We first featured your practice back in 2022. How did you think your practice has evolved since then?

Honestly, the past three years feel like three decades to me! Looking back, when in school, I was constantly surrounded by feedback and suggestions from others—most of them well-intentioned, encouraging me to experiment with many different directions. As a result, the works I created back then now appear somewhat scattered, as if they were still in search of a coherent visual language that truly belonged to me.

One of the most tangible challenges during that period was the physical limitation of space. My studio at school was extraordinarily small—probably even smaller than a Manhattan bedroom— and since I always prefer to work large, it often felt impossible to realize what I envisioned fully. That said, I see my creative development as an organic and gradual process rather than a dramatic shift. Over time, I have learned to sense and construct the rhythm of an exhibition as a whole, to understand how individual works converse with one another and how their relationships shape a show. This awareness is an essential part of how I now conceive and build my practice.

Yuan Fang

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