No. 025
Dai Yinglun
The Crowd – Looking Back
68x45cm
Ink and color on paper
2025
SOLD
People gallop forward through the years, striving to survive while seeking and forging meaning in life. Yet once someone deems themselves unique, that very uniqueness fades away. This work strips away concrete identities and scenarios through a minimalist visual language, and uses the color "white" as a metaphor for the authenticity and freedom of the spirit.
About the Artist
Dai Yinglun
（China，b.1987）
MFA in Chinese Painting, Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts. Based in Shanghai. His work centers on the observation and depiction of “crowds.” Through the recombination of real environments, objects, and human behaviors, his compositions evolve from the depiction of individual figures to complex crowd arrangements, creating seemingly absurd behavioral systems. This approach reflects how, in real life, individuals possess unique personalities, yet when gathered into groups, they resemble “fractals,” developing hierarchies and structures that highlight the blind conformity of collective consciousness as well as the isolation and logical gaps of the individual. His works have been exhibited at the Xi’an Contemporary Art Museum and Shanghai Meibo Art Museum, and he was shortlisted for the John Moores Painting Prize.