Sun Yitian
Sun Yitian was born in Zhejiang, China in 1991. She studied painting at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in China, graduating in 2015 and obtaining an MFA in 2018. Sun Yitian is now completing her doctorate in Literature at the School of Humanities at Tsinghua University, Beijing. The artist lives and works in Beijing.
Sun Yitian is best known for her paintings of mass-produced objects, generally based on staged photographs taken by the artist herself. Lovingly rendered in colorful acrylic paint, the surfaces of the inflatable toys or severed dolls heads—both frequent motifs—shine brightly, often with flecks of reflecting camera lights visible. The paintings’ aesthetic is a quality of the painting process: Seen up close, the photographic precision dissolves, as the painterly and coloristic effects created by the artist’s expert application of paint become apparent. Carefully placed to seduce our gaze—to “remove all resistance to perception” in Sun Yitian’s words—the subtlety of this effect allows the works to exist in a continuously contested realm between representation and abstraction.
Iconography and Sun Yitian’s manner of execution then are perfectly suited: the plastic shell of the toys, its photographic representation, and the flatness of the painted canvas fuse, tenderly capturing mass-produced objects in a traditional medium associated with individual expression and unique creation. Sun Yitian’s use of scale further draws attention to the inherent tension between pathos and banality on which the works draw: represented in human scale, the vastly enlarged objects gaze at us from their huge eyes as if in puzzlement of their newfound sumptuous grandeur.
Sun Yitian had her first solo exhibition titled Portrait at the gallery on occasion of Gallery Weekend Berlin 2023. In the same year she presented her solo exhibition Once Upon a Time in Esther Schipper, Paris.
In 2023 Sun Yitian received the WSJ China’s ON THE FIELD Creator of the Year Award and “BOB Best of the Best” 2022 Young Artist Award. Sun Yitian was selected for the Influential 2023: Forbes China Contemporary Young Artists and Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia Class of 2019.
Recent exhibitions include: The Life of Things, Museum Voorlinden, The Hague (2025); A Cloud in Trousers: Painting Today, West Bund Museum, Shanghai (2024), Boundless Reverie: Chinese Savoir-Faire and Contemporary Art, K11 MUSEA, Hong Kong (2024); One and All: New Artistic Styles of Contemporary Painting, National Art Museum of China, Beijing (2024); Journey Through Chinese Craftsmanship & Contemporary Art, K11, Hong Kong (2024); Bordercrossing: Possibilities and Interactions, Yuz Museum, Shanghai (2023); Projection, Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing (2023); Nián Nián :The Power and Agency of Animal Forms, Deji Art Museum, Nanjing (2023); The Infinite Conversation: 2022 Beijing Biennial “Symbiosis”, National Base for International Cultural Trade, Beijing (2022); The Pieces I Am, Shanghai, UCCA Edge (2022); Art’s Language, Artists’ Game, OCAT Shenzhen, Shenzhen (2022); The Disconnected Generation, Song Art Museum, Beijing (2022).
Sun Yitian’s work is held in the following collections: The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Hort Family Collection, New York; White Rabbit Gallery, Sydney; Museum Voorlinden, Wassenaar; By Art Matters, Hangzhou; Longlati Foundation, Shanghai; Pond Society, Shanghai; M WOODS, Beijing; Yuz Museum, Shanghai; Sifang Art Museum, Nanjing and Long Museum, Shanghai.
Portrait: Photo © Yu Lu. Courtesy of ELLE