Born in 1960 in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, Wu Shan graduated from the Oil Painting Department of Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts with a BFA in 1982 and from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with an MFA in 1986. He is currently a professor at the Sino-German Graduate School of Art at the China Academy of Art.
In 1983, Wu Shan went to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago to receive a complete education in modern art, and during his more than twenty years of living and working in the West, he gradually developed an abstract language with great personal characteristics. Concise and slender lines are repeatedly outlined, surfaced, intersected and merged in a “visible” or “invisible” state. In 2006, Wu Shan returned to Hangzhou, a city with a strong sense of literati elegance, to live and work, and chose the special medium of lacquer to meet with the language he had developed in the past. In Wu Shan's works, there are the daily lessons of the artist, superimposed and collected as he faces himself and observes himself day after day. In the rhythm of life formed by this thread, Wu Shan seems to be simply expressing the outline. He lets the line become a flowing thought, leading these shapes to grow luxuriantly in the space. We may be able to see the shadow of nature in these outlines, but we cannot recognize the concrete image of a leaf or a branch. His threads grow here subtly and deeply, and they seem to become traces left behind in the pursuit of inner peace, becoming more and more appropriate as the artist extends his thoughts and emotions. Resonating the rhythmic sense of kunqu opera with the meaning of gardens, taking a few images to form unique rhythms and beats. Between “stillness” and “movement”, he responds to the body's sensory experience together with the process of creating lacquer. His works do not have the power to shout, but contain the trajectory of life after its manifestation.
Wu Shan's major exhibitions include: "Wu Shan: Drifting", Ginkgo Space (Shenzhen, China, 2025); “Wu Shan: Shan”, Banri Art Museum (Shantou, China, 2024); “Wu Shan”, Beijing Platform China Contemporary Art Institute (2020); “Winding Path”, Beijing Platform China Contemporary Art Institute (2018), and has also held exhibitions at the Lawrence Perrin Gallery, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Matthew Flood New Vision Gallery in Wisconsin, the East-West Contemporary Gallery in Chicago, the South Bend Museum of Art in Indiana, and the Merwin Gallery at the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago, Illinois, among other galleries.
Recent Exhibitions
2025, “Wu Shan: Drifting”, Ginkgo Space, Shenzhen, China
2024, “Wu Shan: Shan”, Banri Art Museum, Shantou, China
2023, “Step into the Unknow Recesses”, Platform China, Beijing, China
2022, “Duration”, Boxes Art Musem, Shunde, Foshan, China
2020, “Wu Shan 2020”, Platform China, Beijing, China
2018-2019, “Wu Shan - Winding Path”, Platform China, Beijing, China
