After graduating from Shanghai Academy of Fine Arts, Shanghai University with a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in oil painting, Shi Zhiying embarked on her career as a professional painter at Shanghai Oil Painting and Sculpture Institute. Over years of creation, the exploration of the essence and language of painting has always been the focus of her practice. Drawing inspiration from both Eastern and Western art history, she adeptly captures the life-movement of the spirit through the rhythm of things and inner logic of breath emphasized in Chinese painting through the language of oil painting, utilizing color, texture, and brushstrokes. Whether depicting the sea, sand, and grass with monochromatic brushstrokes in her early works, or exploring subjects like stones, figures of Buddha, and landscapes with richer colors in her recent creations, she portrays the form of objects with refined language based on the imitation of nature, expressing the nature of things.

She deals with objects’ state of existence in her painting practice. Emphasized in her practice is the interchange of appearance with disappearance: the quality and scale of water, rock, containers, the figure of buddhas, beads are described in painterly strokes. However, the shapes are not definite, but formed by independent lines, brushstrokes, and the paints, conveying an immanent rhythmic logic, stablishing a stable and sensational structure in the process of interacting with the visual experience. The artist demonstrates, via her smooth and insightful paintings, the transience of a being’s life, captures the extremely gradual transition that happens in the space between objects, the painting surfaces, and the present experience.

Shi Zhiying received her MFA from the Department of Oil Painting at the Fine Arts College of Shanghai University (SHU). Her recent solo exhibition include: Shi Zhiying: Stones and Stories, Yuz Museum, Shanghai, China (2024); Bliss, SPSI Art Museum, Shanghai, China (2023); Relative Distance, SPSI Art Museum, Shanghai, China (2019); SHI ZHIYING, Orange County Museum of Art, California, USA (2017). Her recent group exhibition include: A Theatre of Waiting, The Cloud Collection, Nanjing, China (2023); “Super Fusion” – Chengdu Biennale, Chengdu MOCA, Sichuan, China (2021); Legacies of Exchange: Chinese Contemporary Art from the Yuz Foundation, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, USA (2021); The Return of Guests: Selection from the PSA Collection, Power Station of Art (PSA), Shanghai, China, (2019); Hot Blood, White Rabbit Gallery, Sydney, Australia (2019); Post-Brushwork Era: Chinese Landscape, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China; Zhejiang Museum of Art, Hangzhou, China (2018); Visual Questions, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou, China (2017); Yinchuan Biennale – For An Image, Faster Than Light, MOCA YIN CHUAN, Yin Chuan, China (2016); New Capital, Museum of Contemporary Art Chengdu, Chengdu, China (2016); My Generation: Young Chinese Artists, Orange County Museum of Art, California, USA (2015); Conversation through the Asian collections, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia (2015); Aura of Poetry, Museum Contemporary Art Shanghai, Shanghai, China (2014).

Her works are acquired by Power Station of Art, Shanghai; Orange County Museum of Art, Los Angeles; Shanghai Art Museum; Chengdu Art Museum; Art Gallery of New South Wales; Fosun Foundation, Shanghai; Yuz Foundation, Hong Kong; Shanghai Liuhaisu Museum; Cc Foundation, Shanghai; White Rabbit Gallery, Sydney; Pizzuti Collection; By Art Matters, Hang Zhou; X Museum Beijing; and etc.

Shi Zhiying currently lives and works in Shanghai, China.