Xinyi Yang

Xinyi Yang (b.1998) is a London-based Chinese artist working on painting and drawing. Xinyi is currently studying at the Royal College of Art in MA Painting program. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2020). Her art practice addresses the importance of the inner world and sentimental moods through the combination of surreal and abstract painting techniques.

Xinyi’s paintings have been shown in several group exhibitions in Chicago and London. Her first solo exhibition, 'Mothism', was held at SEAGER Gallery, London (2023). She participated the artist residency at Burren College of Art (2019), and received Ox-Bow Merit Scholarship from Ox-Bow School of Art & Artists’ Residency (2019).

In Xinyi's work, she uses a combination of figurative and abstract painting to portray the experience and exploration of the inner world, and to express the complexity of the spirit through sentimentality.

Influenced by Jungian psychology, Christianity and Buddhism, Xinyi includes religious and psychological reflections in her work. The recurring symbols represent the unreachable absolute, which cannot be surpassed. The lines portray the universe and human reason. Both confine the spirit to the infinite finiteness. The spirit also creates complexity within it, suffocating itself in a fictive grandeur that it cannot breathe and can only explore within itself.

Memory and mood are the starting points for Xinyi's work. The figurative imagery of memory is the vehicle for emotions. The fineness of the brushstrokes and the uncompromising attention to details are the processing of vague memories. The inaccessibility of memory is temporarily fulfilled through complicated editing, making the pursuit of incompleteness a fascinating and hypocritical illusion that feeds on the lack of completeness.

In Xinyi's painting, she incorporates sentimentality into a deceptively positive illusion, a metaphor for the decay hidden within. The decadence with vitality is the result of the absence of perfection, the inaccessibility of memories, and the restrictive nature of the mind. Xinyi uses her aesthetic and philosophy to portray the complexity and depth of the mind, inviting the viewer into these immersive landscapes to explore the world of the self.