Bench worker turned writer who blossomed into a painter

Jin Yucheng, a Shanghai writer, best known for his novel Blossoms, is showing off his creativity in another field — visual art — with a solo exhibition at the Bund One Art Museum.

The exhibition is comprised of some 200 paintings and sketches, most of which have been created in the past 10 years.

The 71-year-old author was editor of the Shanghai Literature magazine for decades before publishing Blossoms in 2013. The novel is centered on the life of three young men from different backgrounds and neighborhoods in Shanghai in the second half of the 20th century.

A best-seller in China, and recipient of multiple national literary awards, the novel has been adapted for theater. And a television adaptation by renowned director Wong Kar-wai is also being made.

Jin did not receive any artistic training.

Back in the 1970s, the Shanghai native was sent to Heilongjiang province to work on farms, and it was during this period that he chanced upon a dog-eared book copy of Architectural Pen Drawing Tutorial.

After returning to Shanghai, he was a bench worker in a clock factory and spent half a year learning to do mechanical drawing. A sketch, titled The Sycamore and Figs, which was done in 1976, is on display at the exhibition.

Jin started to take painting seriously when he made a series of illustrations for Blossoms. The sketches outlined the age-old landscape of Shanghai, and blended the past and present, fiction and facts. They have a special intertextuality with the novel, says Xie Xiaodong, the curator of the exhibition.

"But Jin's ambition didn't stop there. Over the past 10 years, he has created a complete system of visual expression that covers a variety of subjects, media and techniques. Either through text or painting, Jin is dedicated to the search for the distinctive tonality of things, in the hopes of catching the sparkle in a multitude of events and characters," Xie adds.

Xie Dingwei, founding director of Bund One Art Museum, says he is impressed by Jin's wild imagination and ingenious use of colors.

"Bund One Art Museum has presented some important Western art exhibitions over the past few years and people sometimes get this impression that we do exhibitions from overseas exclusively, but that's not the case. Jin's art reflects a distinctive Shanghai style, which makes our museum an ideal location for this exhibition," Xie Dingwei says.

If you go

Blossoms: Jin Yucheng Solo Exhibition

10 am-6 pm, final entry by 5:30 pm, Nov 25-Jan 28, 2024.

Bund One Art Museum, 1 Zhongshan East One Road, Huangpu district, Shanghai.