Liu Shangying

Liu Shangying, Mongolian, was born in 1974 in Kunming, Yunnan, China. He teaches in the Oil Painting Department at CAFA. He is now a professor, a supervisor for master and doctoral programs and the vice dean of the Oil Painting Department, CAFA. He is now based in Beijing. 

Since 2011, Liu Shangying has made a number of trips to create large-size paintings from life in Ngari in Tibet, Ejin Banner in Inner Mongolia, and Lop Nor in Xinjiang, etc. Inspired by these places, he finished “Lake Manasarovar” series ,“Desert Poplars and the Sand” series and ”Wilderness Project” series. In his solo exhibitions after 2017, he started to explore the relationship between painting and nature by placing the on-site paintings in natural environment. He does not paint the landscape, but rather he paints in the landscape. In these paintings myriad of figures become “actors” in nature. There is an inseparable connection between these works of art and his body movements while painting. Like an ascetic, he immerses himself in the primeval nature, building, with his physical being and his movements, a multi-dimensional pictorial field where he can be engaged in a dialogue of presence with nature, therefore finding his way into a “second nature” based on the act of painting.         

His major solo exhibitions include “Fleeting” (Beijing Inside-out Art Museum, 2013), “Myriad Visions Rise from the Void” (National Art Museum of China, 2015), “A Blue Mountain Looms into Town (Changshu Art Museum, 2016), “Living Natures” (Hongcheng Relics, Ejin Banner, Alxa League, Inner Mongolia, 2017) , “Wilderness Project” (Honghe Valley, Tuokexun, Xinjiang, 2019) ,“Who’s Painting” (Star Gallery, 2021)  and "Liu Shangying-Walking between worlds"(TAG Art Museum,2022).

He has exhibited his works in a number of museums both in China and abroad, such as the Vittoriano in Rome, National Museum of Indonesia, Doria Pamphilj in Valmontone in Rome, National Art Gallery of Bulgaria, The Prince’s School of Traditional Arts, New York Academy of Art, Columbia University, Art Museum of CAFA, Taimiao Art Museum, Today Art Museum, ZhuZhong Art Museum, Song Art Museum, Shenzhen Guanshanyue Art Museum, China Arts Museum, Suzhou Jinji Lake Art Museum, Liu Haisu Art Museum, Changshu Museum, Inner Mongolia Art Museum, Shijiazhuang Art Museum, Xucun Village Contemporary Art Museum, etc. Some of his paintings have been collected by some museums and organizations, like the Maeght Foundation of France, the Art Museum of CAFA, Inside-out Art Museum, Today Art Museum,  ZhuZhong Art Museum, Pang Xunqin Museum, Changshu Museum, Alxa Museum in Inner Mongolia, and Ejin Banner Museum in Inner Mongolia, etc.