Dai Yinglun received Master degree in Chinese Painting from the Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts, currently lives and works in Shanghai. Deeply influenced by Zen, Buddhism and Eastern philosophy, he has developed a distinctive visual language characterised by dispersed, flattened compositions depicting the myriad conditions of human existence. Moving beyond binary oppositions, his work presents a dual perspective on the collective and the individual. His practice has garnered significant attention for its vitality and originality. Dai’s works have been exhibited and collected at institutions including the Shanghai Meibo Art Museum, Xi’an Contemporary Art Museum. Awarded the Gold Prize at the Shanghai Annual Youth Ink Exhibition, and the Artand Annual Award for Most Noteworthy Artist.

At the core of Dai’s practice lies a sustained observation of the human condition and social collectivity. Informed by Zen thought and Eastern philosophical traditions, he rejects habitual dualistic frameworks—such as good versus bad, subject versus object, rational versus emotional—arguing that excessive reliance on labels and conceptual structures breeds anxiety and alienation. For Dai, art offers a pathway that transcends rational cognition, enabling a more direct transmission and articulation of lived experience.

His work unfolds through a dual inquiry into the collective and the individual. On one level, it presents a macro-level portrayal of social groups shaped by the fixed structures of small-city environments, reflecting both curiosity and perplexity toward human society. On another, it probes the inner landscape of the individual, exploring the layering and shifting of multiple states of consciousness. Dai holds a deep affinity for the elegance and moral bearing embodied in traditional Chinese attire, using his figures to question the continuity of shared imagination and collective consciousness across time.

His work unfolds through a dual inquiry into the collective and the individual. On one level, it presents a macro-level portrayal of social groups shaped by the fixed structures of small-city environments, reflecting both curiosity and perplexity toward human society. On another, it probes the inner landscape of the individual, exploring the layering and shifting of multiple states of consciousness. Dai holds a deep affinity for the elegance and moral bearing embodied in traditional Chinese attire, using his figures to question the continuity of shared imagination and collective consciousness across time. Technically, Dai has established a highly recognisable mode of dispersed, flattened composition populated by densely arranged figures. Abandoning Western single-point perspective and anatomical realism, he adopts the traditional Eastern method of multiple perspectives and planar spatial organisation. This strategy generates a deliberate sense of estrangement, cultivating a distinctly Eastern aesthetic sensibility. Inspired by Ming and Qing dynasty woodblock prints, he is particularly drawn to the depiction of crowded scenes. The figures in his paintings evolved from early representations of “naked, primordial humans” stripped of temporal and cultural markers to increasingly complex ensembles integrating historical costumes and cultural symbols. Rather than observing the crowd from a detached vantage point, Dai immerses himself fully into each figure during the act of painting, endowing every individual with distinct emotions, backgrounds, and even imagined biographies. Each seemingly minor presence thus attains a vivid sense of lived reality.

Within the broader trajectory of contemporary ink painting, Dai Yinglun’s practice reflects a critical reassessment of traditional discipline and a conscious loosening of method. Despite his rigorous training in meticulous brushwork, he recognises the aesthetic inertia and psychological constraints embedded within established conventions. Consequently, he undertakes what may be described as a “conceptual subtraction,” gradually dismantling internalised frameworks concerning how painting ought to be made, allowing brush and ink to return to the immediacy of perception. He challenges the classical premise of premeditated composition—“having the bamboo fully formed in one’s mind”—arguing that painting should not merely reproduce preconceived imagery, but emerge through the act of execution itself. In this sense, painting becomes a process synchronised with time and resonant with intuition. Such an approach not only unsettles the procedural conventions of traditional ink, but also opens more expansive possibilities for articulating the spiritual dimensions of contemporary figural collectivity.