Wei Qingji 魏青吉

Born in Qingdao in 1971, Wei Qingji graduated from the Oriental Art Department of Nankai University in 1995 and from the Mural Department of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2003. He is among the leading young generation of artists in the new modernist ink painting field. He utilizes his profound knowledge of traditional ink and brush painting to develop a new and personal aesthetic based on his dramatic incorporation of iconic brand images from the West into a starkly pristine pictorial field. His paintings express both the contemporary appetite in China for brash Western materialism and the comforting certainties of China's rich cultural past. His works have been included in various prominent exhibitions such as the Second Annual Chengdu Biennale and the International Chinese Ink Painting Exhibition at the Asian Cultural Center in New York. He is currently teaching at the College of Art in South China Normal in Guangzhou.