Yu was born in the
Liaoning Province, in northern
China, in 1976.[1] From 1996 to 2000 he completed his bachelor's degree at the Lu Xun Fine Arts Academy, in
Shenyang, around 250 km north of his hometown
Xiuyan. In 2001, at the age of 25, he moved to
Europe to study at the
Düsseldorf Academy of Fine Art under the German artist
Jörg Immendorff. Fearing that the influence of the strong willed master would have suppressed his individual style and seeking for academic experience in more than only one establishment, he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Art in
Kassel in 2002.[2] In 2006, he earned his master's degree in painting at the Kunsthochschule
Kassel,
Germany, under Professor Jurgen Meyer.[3] In 2013 he had his PhD from the School of Architecture of the
Central Academy of Fine Arts,
Beijing,
China. He is now an associate professor at School of Architecture and Urban Planning of the
Tongji University in
Shanghai and works between there,
Beijing and
Bochum.[4]
Artistic work
When studying abroad in
Germany, Yu has found a transparent chemical fabric, solid and with closely, woven meshes, which could be seen through from front to back. This kid of fabric, after slightly processing, can be a painting medium. Its transparency implicates the creation of a hybrid dimension that consists of both the virtual space created through the artist's brush strokes and the physical space in front and behind the canvas. The painted net between the subject and the observer, the incisiveness of the chiaroscuro and the round thicker layers of colour tidily painted by the artist at regular distance collaborate to intensify this effect. The "spatialisation“ and "sensitisation“ of painting have already become a new trend of this era, and this group of transparent paintings by Yu just corresponds to this new indication, being of great inspiration for the development of painting methods.[5]