You Jia Tan

Tan You Jia, born in 1995 in Hsinchu, Taiwan, graduated from the Department of Fine Arts at National Taiwan Normal University in 2017 and completed her graduate studies in the Department of Oil Painting at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2023 under the tutelage of Liu Xiaodong. She currently lives and creates in Shanghai.

Tan You Jia's work explores the experimental application of painting, transforming it into a transcendental form of imagery, thereby emphasizing the intuitive, open, and receptive nature of the act of painting. She seeks to escape the limitations of experiential cognition, thereby releasing the power of perception. Elements of wind and water often appear in her paintings, drawn from the moisture and warm currents of her southern hometown. She loves to express fluidity, a softness that contains energy.

Her artistic series embarks on a surreal journey, where images are deconstructed and recomposed, weaving together a vast, vibrant world. These organic elements might appear as flowing water, light and shadow, partial structures of the human body, smoke, or plants, all intertwining and blending to form fragments of the universe. In these works, there is no protagonist; each element is but a small part of the long river of the universe's history.