Yuan Fang
(Born 1996)
Yuan Fang was born in Shenzhen, China, in 1996. Growing up in a large, metropolitan city encouraged her to embrace a global and eclectic view of the world, an outlook furthered by her first visit to the United States as a young girl and her subsequent relocation to the country. Fang attended the School of Visual Arts in New York City, where she received the Rhodes Family Award for Outstanding Achievement. She then continued at SVA, receiving her MFA from the institution in 2022 under the tutelage of artists such as James Siena and Marilyn Minter. It was through this experience that she was able to come into close contact with artists from The New York School as well as Francis Bacon—all of whom have left a mark on her practice. Living in another country has both expanded her understanding of our global contemporary environment and brought her closer to her cultural roots and ideological foundations. Perceiving herself as a site of intertwining cultural experiences and awareness, she explores the dichotomy of global connection and diasporic living in her work.
Fang's work is often large in scale and entirely abstract, characterized by lyrical and massive swirls of paint. These energetic marks are geological in their feel, tied to notions of the body, landscape, space, and time. Fang describes these amorphous forms as distorted human bodies, and she builds them up on her canvas improvisational, without using preparatory sketches or studies. This fluid yet intense way of working allows for unexpected discoveries and risk-taking that is important to Fang's process.
Fang 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, 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.
