Ji Dachun was born in 1968 in Nantong, Jiangsu, China. He graduated from Central Academy of Fine Arts, Oil Painting Department, Beijing, China in 1993. As one of the most representative Chinese contemporary artists, Ji Dachun is widely noticed for his distinctive personal style. His paintings are witty, humorous, ethereal and tranquil, and full of romantic poetry and Zen. In particular, his choice and persistence in easel painting, in an environment where installations, images, pictures, and multimedia methods are becoming more popular, it highlights its unique expressive charm and profound significance.

After having produced many of his now-widely recognized figurative paintings from his early career, Ji Dachun (b. 1968) begins to gravitate towards acrylic, a medium that is comparatively lighter and less saturated than oil paint.  Initially he was obsessed with the viscous pictorial effect of acrylic, and later on there were his serial explorations of the themes of “Black” and “White”. Throughout this entire process, he has experimented with Payne’s gray—which he considered an unstable pigment color—in terms of how it presents different shades of transparencies, textures, and tonal layers on the canvas.  He experimented so as to grasp the relationship between the subject of paint, the residue, and the image.  Through this project, Ji Dachun endeavors to grasp his own position within the coordination of (art) history and reality and comes up with his own rationales to experiment with—or deconstruct—paint in a perhaps attempt to approximate the boundaries of finite things.

Ji has held solo exhibitions at LudwigMuseum (Koblenz,Germany), MACRO Museo d‘Arte Contemporanea Roma (Rome, Italy), Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (Beijing, China), Kunstmuseum Bern (Bern, Switzerland), Posco Museum (Seoul, South Korea) and other art institutions. His works have been exhibited in the 56th Venice Biennial, 2012 Gwangju Biennale Special Exhibition, The First Triennial of Chinese Arts, 2001 Chengdu Biennale, 2000 Shanghai Biennale, the 1st China Oil Painting Biennale and the 2nd 2ed Annual China Oil Painting Exhibition.