I spent three years in graphic and 3D design after college graduation, and then art became an outlet — exactly as you said. Through commercial works I had to share the ideas of the others; in art making I get to express my own thoughts.
I believe that art reflects what an artist thinks. However, good art can never be calculated, it must form with honesty and genuineness. My approach is to put myself into unfamiliar situations, whether it’s a new environment, new media or through a new platform. As long as there’re something I’m unfamiliar with, I keep myself engaged in the discovery.

I would rather for my works to define themselves, instead of coming up with a statement of my own — it’s not fair to limit a viewer’s perspective to my own viewpoint, especially when they depict landscapes — landscapes mean different things to different people who may have different experiences within them. At the meantime, I’m happy to embrace what they have made my audiences feel. If it’s the "dark and the enigmatic" feeling that resonates with you, I’m glad that the tones speak to you.

I was born and raised in Jiading, a suburban water town approximately an hour away from downtown Shanghai. Jiading was a very special [place] in my childhood memory, for it was once extremely traditional, with small stone bridges connecting the streets above an old canal. In 1999, I left Jiading to go to college in the city; when I came back after graduation, the water town was gone, demolished and erased. Instead it became a tasteless industrialised suburban town just like every elsewhere. The sudden make-over of Jiading really shocked me, I guess I had to express it somewhere in my works.
I grew up with Shanghai’s 30-year of urbanisation. Throughout my upbringing, my country has changed from an era of supplies shortage where people live off of food stamps to a new world where the local market has caught up with the global economy. The contradictions and side effects have also undergone and resulted in tremendous pressure. The pressure affects everyone who lives in it, including artists. Artists naturally translate the pressure into visual elements. Artworks naturally appear under these special circumstances.

I was trained as a traditional Chinese landscape painting from a very young age, landscape paintings have become a natural language to me. In college, I studied digital art making including photography and design, among many other [disciplines]; eventually all these languages come back to support what I feel the most comfortable painting — landscapes. So, I guess the hybrid of these two elements collided naturally for me.

The ancient aesthetics have always been a part of my education, and I’m not surprised that it reflects in everything I encounter. It’s something that’s running in my blood and I can’t undo it. Meanwhile I grew up in the 21st century with TV broadcast, Hollywood movies and social media cultures just like everyone else in the world — if I can’t be fully satisfied with the aesthetics of brush and ink painting, I assume no one else can. Ancient aesthetics must transcend to some sort of a form to sustain my own modern tastes, and I would continue my experiments to find out how.

This is a question that’s up to my audience to answer. Again, I’d be happy to hear different answers. Technically, all the elements in my works are made of documentary photography. I simply re-arranged them towards an extreme capacity.

In 2018, I moved from Shanghai to New York. My personal life as well as my critical thinking have undergone tremendous changes ever since. Different from China’s homogeneous and socialist ideology, the U.S. has to deal with more diverse social issues, taking in consideration race and religions. I now have a keen interest in [America's] complicated society.

To speak to audiences who grew up with different backgrounds but find a mutual connection.

I’ve been working on a video referring to a Song Dynasty painting called Nine Dragons.