Born in 1964 in Ji’nan, Shandong Province, Wang Yin grew up in Qingdao. He graduated from the Department of Stage Design, the Central Academy of Drama in 1988. He lives and works in Beijing.

Painting for Wang Yin is very much a vehicle for his long term research into issues of history and ideology, and central to this process is his strong affinity with Chinese art history, especially the modern history of Chinese oil painting. The cultural and ideological tension in Wang Yin’s canvases don’t spring from his compositions per se, but from their apparent lack of contemporaneity. Their intricately subdued tones and ostensibly quiet subject matter convey issues at the very heart of – but often hidden by – contemporary life. The subjects of Wang Yin’s paintings are always anonymous people, anonymous things, anonymous places. The more anonymous they appear, the more they seem to approach the primal state of our encounter with the world.

Wang Yin’s recent solo exhibitions include: Wang Yin 2021, A07 Building, 798 Art Zone, Beijing; Friendship, Mirrored Gardens, Guangzhou, 2017; The Gift, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA), Beijing, 2016.