A Conversation with Sun Yitian, the Chinese Artworld’s New It Girl

 Sun Yitian, Ken, 2023. Acrylic on canvas, 80.7 x 117.3 in / 205 × 298 cm. Courtesy BANK, Shanghai

 

By PAUL LASTER July 6, 2024

A young Chinese painter with a unique vision and extraordinary skills, Sun Yitian makes Neo-Pop paintings of consumer objects familiar to her childhood but not the typical subject matter for modern and contemporary art. Working in a hyper-realistic style, the Beijing-based artist employs inflatable toy animals, plants, and characters, along with Barbie’s friend Ken and other figurative objects, to create colorful canvases from her closely cropped photographic images, which she stages in her studio.

Drawing since she was a child and painting since her teens, she graduated from the Painting Department of China Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in 2015, earned a Master’s Degree, and is now completing her doctorate of Literature at the School of Humanities at Tsinghua University. She has exhibited internationally at galleries, museums, and art fairs since she was in college, sold out solo shows in Asia and Europe, and was awarded On The Field 2022-2023 "Creator of the Year" by Wall Street Journal Men's Style China.

She collaborated with Louis Vuitton, which produced ready-to-wear, handbags, and perfume bottles with her artwork for the Louis Vuitton Voyager Show this spring, and made new paintings of a decapitated Ken (objectifying the iconic fashion doll to subvert the male gaze) for BANK’s presentation at Frieze Los Angeles (one of her two Ken paintings was acquired by the Los County Museum of Art) and Esther Schipper’s booth at Art Basel in Basel. Occupied in the studio and with her studies, Sun Yitian recently took the time to discuss her creative development and artistic practice with Whitehot Magazine.
 

Sun Yitian, Quack, 2015. Acrylic on canvas, 72 x 72 in / 183 × 183 cm. Courtesy BANK, Shanghai

When did you first become interested in art?

When I was a child, I once took a nap in kindergarten, and when I woke up, I drew a princess and showed it to my classmates. I made lots of small cuts on the princess’ dress with scissors and then put it under the sun, and the dress shone as if it were glowing. My classmates were very surprised and pleased. At that moment, I felt that drawing was especially fun for me, and I hoped to keep drawing.

Was Wenzhou, where you grew up, a creative place to live?

Wenzhou is a vibrant and creative city in southern China. During China's reform and opening-up period—circa 1978-2008—Wenzhou had many innovative business and economic models.

What did your primary and junior high studies involve at your school, which was affiliated with the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing?

My primary and junior high studies were at Wenzhou Junior Art School, and our curriculum was very similar to that of art universities, with courses in drawing, color theory, sketching, art history, Chinese painting, and calligraphy. At that time, I was also introduced to artworks by domestic and foreign masters.

What kind of art did you make in your years there?

We had sketching assignments every week in high school, and the form was not restricted. So, I did a lot of work on paper, mostly related to my emotional life experience at that time. In adolescence, all of my senses were very active, and I was curious about everything.
 

  Sun Yitian, Right Hand, Left Hand, 2017. Acrylic on wood panel, 20.9 x 17.7 in / 53 × 45 cm × 2. Courtesy BANK, Shanghai
 

Did you paint with oils?

I made some oil paintings depicting friends around me, the classroom where I studied, the wasteland I saw outside my home window...

What was it like to be a teenager in Beijing during such a boom period of art and architecture, before and after the 2008 Olympic Games?

Everything was thriving at the time of the Beijing Olympics. I felt the sky was bluer than usual and the future was full of opportunities and unlimited possibilities.

What was it like at the Central Academy of Fine Arts when you entered?

The Central Academy of Fine Arts was actually a place with broad freedom. At that time, almost every student aspired to a literary life. They were not too willing to take academic courses but put a lot of energy into film, music, literature, and so on. The school would invite many well-known directors and artists to give lectures.

Sun Yitian, Tropical Penguin, 2018. Acrylic on canvas, 59 x 59 in /150 × 150 cm. Courtesy BANK, Shanghai
 

How did your painting change while you were there?

In the beginning, I was very fond of minimalism, and I made a lot of attempts at abstraction. I was reacting to different interests. It was not until later that I gradually found my own painting language.

How did you develop an interest in painting toy inflatables and other plastic toys?

My hometown, Wenzhou, is a very developed manufacturing city in southern China. It is famous for manufacturing all kinds of small commodities and light industrial products. Historically, objects' life spans were longer than that of human beings, while in modern times, they have become increasingly short. I am attached to these ephemeral objects produced on the assembly line, which I consider the imprint of our era.

Was acrylic a better medium for rendering these subjects?

Yes, acrylic itself is plastic. Plastic is very difficult to degrade, and I like the idea of painting plastic with plastic.

 Exhibition view, Sun Yitian: a twinkle, BANK, Shanghai, September 15, 2018 - October 28, 2018. Courtesy BANK, Shanghai
 

Did you render the inflatable animals and objects, like beach balls and hammers, in the same way that you would paint a doll’s head or plastic flower?

The methods are not all the same. Each image has many subtle differences, the difference being in the painterly part.

Were you commenting on consumerism or working from childhood memories?

It's hard to escape the impressions left by your direct experience. I grew up during the most prosperous period of China's reform and opening-up period when the commodity economy boomed and influenced every aspect of life. There's no way to look at these two things separately.

Were you using new objects, like Jeff Koons had done when he used store-bought inflatables and vacuum cleaners in his altered readymade sculptures, or old objects like Niki de Saint Phalle had used in her assemblages?

It's both and sometimes even a mix: a hybrid of remembered and new, readily available items.

 Sun Yitian, Me, 2015. Oil on canvas, 47. 2 x 47.2 in / 120 × 120 cm. Courtesy BANK, Shanghai
 

What was it like to shop at the Yiwu Commodity Market, where you reportedly bought many of your plastic objects?

I've been there, but my items are purchased from different sources. Some are bought from roadside stalls, some are purchased on Taobao (the biggest shopping site in China run by Alibaba), and many are just figments of my imagination.

Why did you decide to photograph these objects and paint from the pictures rather than starting with a drawing?

In the early works, I would set everything up, including the tablecloth and lighting, and then tweak the position. Many of my paintings are comprised of objects and light, but sometimes, I fabricate things that don't make sense.

Do you paint the shadows and flecks of reflective light to add a sculptural dimension to the paintings or to make them more photorealistic?

I did that to put them in a vacuum state for the audience—a kind of forced viewing.

How does your use of an airbrush alter the reality of the subjects you paint?

The granularity of the airbrush removes some of the traces of the brushstrokes.

 
Sun Yitian, Ken, 2020. Acrylic on wood panel, 17. 7 x 21.3 in / 45 × 54 cm, Courtesy BANK, Shanghai
 

Were you commenting on women being delegated as objects of desire when you painted your 2015 self-portrait, Me, as a sex doll?

The context of feminism in China in 2015 was very different from now. The decade has changed radically. That was a true reflection of myself at that time.

Were you aiming at a Neo-Pop aesthetic with your brightly painted pictures of inflatables and toy objects?

I'm painting very classical paintings, like 17^th-century Dutch still-life paintings. I'm looking for warmth and coolness in the image, the reality of the edges, and the object’s presence in space.

Why did you paint the objects so objectively, on solid backgrounds without any sense of storytelling?

I needed absolute objectivity to maintain a truly neutral state, and I didn’t want to include any personal emotions or narratives.

 Sun Yitian, Red Elephant, 2021. Acrylic on canvas, 59 x 59 in / 150 × 150 cm. Courtesy BANK, Shanghai
 

Were you aware of what your European counterparts, artists like Oli Epp and Austin Lee, were painting and how they were painting it at the time?

I have chatted with them on Instagram and admire their work. We young artists learn from each other and encourage each other.

Did you see an affinity between your art and their work?

There are definitely some similarities in our understanding of color, as we both grew up watching the colors of digital screens—but the core of our works is very different.

What’s your fascination with Barbie’s doll-friend Ken?

He's a symbolic being. He represents a lot of things. I love how he’s smooth and perfect, like all the beautiful selfies on social media platforms.

Installation view, Sun Yitian: Fly only when the shades of night gather, BANK, Shanghai, Nov 10, 2021 - Jan 30, 2022. Courtesy BANK, Shanghai

Are you making a feminist statement by repeatedly painting his decapitated head?

I'm just emphasizing his attributes as an "object." Of course, many viewers have commented to me that it's like a female gaze. I don't disagree with that. We women have been watched for so long that it's time for us to gaze.

Why did you start painting diptychs, which almost seem like stereographic images from early photography?

Because I like the dialog between the images, it creates a wonderful relationship, similar to a montage effect.

Are you adding a conceptual element to your subject matter through the juxtapositions?

Concepts are not an end in themselves, but juxtapositions offer more possibilities.

What led you to design dramatically lit installations of your paintings in darkened spaces with draped and patterned walls like your exhibition “Fly only when the shades of night gather” at BANK in Shanghai?

At the time of that exhibition, I wanted to create a sense of theater, with each painting as a prop.

 

 Sun Yitian, Porcelain Mother, 2023. Acrylic on wood panel, 21.3 x 17.7 in / 54 × 45 cm. Courtesy Esther Schipper, Berlin, Paris, and Seoul.
 

Since you’ve only made a limited number of sculptures, how do you decide if a painted piece or a readymade object should become a sculpture?

Intuition.

Your 2022 exhibition at UCCA Edge in Shanghai showed another side of your work, with a massive installation mixing painting, sculpture, and other media. What were you exploring with the work, and will we see more of this way of working from you in the future?

In that exhibition, I made stickers of all the eyes in my paintings, and people could stick these eyes as many times as they wanted in the exhibition hall. Some of them were put on the urinals in toilets, some were set on fire hoses, and they were everywhere like the eyes of "Big Brother." I will definitely continue to explore suitable public projects that involve the viewer in my work rather than the static manner of viewing a painting.

 Installation view, Boundless Reverie: Chinese Savoir-Faire and Contemporary Art, K11 Art & Cultural Centre, K11 MUSEA, Hong Kong, March 26 - May 19, 2024. Courtesy K11 Art Foundation, Hong Kong
 

Whether it’s a painting or a sculpture, what attracts you to shifting the scale, which is most often to a larger size?

There is not only upscaling; there is also downscaling in my work. The scale represents an attitude, and sometimes, the scale of the work is part of the concept of the work. I have a giant fetish; I like things as tall and grand as monuments.

What led to the shift in subject matter for the paintings that you showed in the fall of 2023 with Esther Schipper in Paris, which became more narrative?

Maybe because I started a PhD in philosophy, I’ve gained a new understanding of narrative in a picture.

Have your dreams entered these works, where the objects are now seen in romantic landscapes rather than in minimal fields of color?

It's not so much that my dreams entered the works as that art history entered them. I always wanted to seek a link with the classics.

 
Installation view, Sun Yitian: Once upon a time, Esther Schipper, Paris, 2023. Photo © Andrea Rossetti. Courtesy Esther Schipper, Berlin, Paris, and Seoul.
 

Are the mythological figures in the new works an embrace of Western culture or are they derived from your study of literature in pursuit of a doctorate in philosophy?

Actually, it’s more like exploring rather than embracing. Although they seem to be Western mythological figures and products of Western culture, there is actually an Eastern logic at work. For example, in my painting Porcelain Mother, she is both the Madonna and the Guanyin (a Bodhisattva). This is because I grew up at a time when cultures were mingling. I remember my aunt's husband was a staunch Catholic—he had many statues of the Madonna in his house—while my family was Buddhist and worshiped the statue of Guanyin. When I was a child, I often couldn't tell the difference between them because they were probably all made on the same assembly line in Yiwu.

Were you also bringing a form of surrealism into the work that may have always subliminally been there?

I am pursuing surrealism in feeling, not in picture form. For example, the surrealism of putting mosquito legs on elephants like Dali is not what I am pursuing. I am actually pursuing a very narrow strip of land between realism and surrealism. WM

 Sun Yitian, Ken, 2023. Acrylic on canvas, 59 x 59 in / 150 × 150 cm. Courtesy Esther Schipper, Berlin, Paris, and Seoul.

English Translation by BANK