Ziyi Huang

Ziyi Huang is a painter who has exhibited extensively in China and internationally in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. Notable solo exhibitions include Neverland Space and Xiamen Times Gallery. Prizes include a grant from the Fengmian Lin Foundation and Fukoka’s Mayor award from the Pulse exhibition. Ziyi’s work remains in prestigious collections in institutions such as Dafen Art Museum and School of Foundation Studies of China Academy of Art.

Ziyi works in four formats: figure painting, landscape painting, still life painting and drawings. His most vivid works revolve around landscapes (which also include cityscapes), the reason being the angled compositions are best served within a distant configuration. The landscapes are often portrayed from unusual angles, sometimes high above the subject as if painted from a helicopter or from the top of a mountain. In regards to the figure painting, Ziyi infuses life with his scratchy yet delicately naturalistic brushstrokes, also evident in other types of artworks. There remains almost no linear qualities as forms and subjects gradually soften with subtle gradations of color.

Hollow Mountain No.16 (top of article) captures Ziyi’s delicate eye most precisely with variations of viridian green mixed with multiple applications of yellow and white. The pine trees subtly pop up through the extreme angle of the overhead painting until directing the viewer’s eye towards the lone epic pine tree, standing to the right towering over the rest of the landscape. Monumental yet poetic, the lone tree stands as a symbol of strength and contrast against a vast landscape of paleness.

Hollow Mountain No. 6 (pictured above) and Hollow Mountain No. 7 (pictured below) beautifully convey the power of painting as a study in a soft and balanced approach. The simple compositions consist of dividing the canvases diagonally down the middle to create two triangular forms, one negative space and the other positive. Hollow Mountain No. 7 displays a split, as if the mountain of tree foliage behaves as a scissor while No. 6 remains flat with a single bushel of tree foliage peeking above the rest of the frey of green.

The psychology in Ziyi’s figurative paintings consist of calm subjects dressed in formal contemporary attire with a mix of geometry or a plain monotone background. With relaxed postures and facial expressions, Ziyi expresses a clean, pristine surface with slightly off-centered composition and large infusions of neutral tones. The colors are quieted down as every hue seems to be simmered with laces of grays, whites, and earthy flavors. Still lifes such as Peaches on Green Cloth (pictured below) reflect an unusual brightness of color within Ziyi’s palette. The peaches become vastly separated in odd numbers showing an appreciation of distance, without crowding the composition. Our eye remains guided through a triangular circulation of the peaches along with the subtle corner angle of the table reaching towards the edge of the canvas.

Ziyi Huang’s work reflects a sense of poetry and sensitivity to the nature of paint. With a large, consistent yet varied portfolio, he establishes new notions of what contemporary representational painting conveys in the context of minimalistic approaches to composition. Simply elegant yet containing complex refinement, his work may be seen as a basket of enjoyable contradictions in rhythmical pronouncement.