Biography
Yeh Fang is a contemporary Chinese ink painter and garden designer whose work dissolves the boundary between the painted landscape and the cultivated one. Born in 1962 and raised in the Bi Garden in Suzhou, he grew up surrounded by the classical gardens that have defined the city's cultural identity for centuries; during the Cultural Revolution his family was forced to give up their private garden. He graduated from Suzhou College of Arts in 1983 and went on to become a Senior Painter at the Suzhou Academy of Chinese Painting and a member of the Jiangsu Branch of the Association of Artists in China.
Yeh Fang's paintings employ an aerial perspective characteristic of traditional Chinese shanshui (mountain-water) composition, yet his sensibility is distinctly contemporary. Working in ink on paper, he evokes lush, meditative worlds that seem to hover between map and reverie, inviting viewers into spaces where architecture, water, and foliage merge into a single breathing organism.
His practice spans both the painted and the planted. In 2003 he designed and completed Nan Shi Pi Ji, a modern garden in Suzhou realized in the classical idiom, connecting his work to the tradition of the city's celebrated Ming- and Qing-dynasty gardens. As observers noted at the 53rd Venice Biennale, where his work was shown, one can never tell which came first — the garden or the painting — or whether they appeared together.
Yeh Fang has exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Biennale, and his gardens and paintings have been commissioned and collected abroad. He continues to work from Suzhou, designing traditional Chinese gardens for contemporary settings while painting the blossom realm that inhabits his imagination.
Key Facts
- Active Period
- 1962
- Nationality
- 🇨🇳China
- Movement
- Contemporary Mokuhanga
- Subjects
- Abstract
- Works Indexed
- 3
Frequently Asked Questions
Yeh Fang is a contemporary Chinese ink painter and garden designer whose work dissolves the boundary between the painted landscape and the cultivated one. Born in 1962 and raised in the Bi Garden in Suzhou, he grew up surrounded by the classical gardens that have defined the city's cultural identity for centuries; during the Cultural Revolution his family was forced to give up their private garden. He graduated from Suzhou College of Arts in 1983 and went on to become a Senior Painter at the Suzhou Academy of Chinese Painting and a member of the Jiangsu Branch of the Association of Artists in China.
Yeh Fang was active born in 1962. They were associated with the Contemporary Mokuhanga movement.
Yeh Fang's work was shaped by the Contemporary Mokuhanga tradition in Japanese woodblock printmaking. Contemporary Mokuhanga: Contemporary mokuhanga (literally "wood-block print") encompasses artists working from approximately 1970 to the present who continue or reinvent traditional Japanese woodblock printing techniques.
Yeh Fang's prints frequently feature abstract.
