Using everything within his reach, Ye Qin Zhu adopts a maximalist approach to painting, both materially and technically. Zhu combines natural materials such as tree roots and semi-precious stones with mass produced plastics and hardware – all while using acrylic paint and relief sculpting to fuse all the components together. His work spans the history of Western and Eastern art and cultural influences—ranging from Duchamp’s readymade assemblages to Tishan Hsu’s expositions of human nature and technology. His scope combines classical painting techniques with abstraction and Chinese nature paintings, and in doing so, Zhu propels the conversation of contemporary painting toward global interconnectedness.
Ye Qin Zhu was born in Taishan, China in 1986 to farmers who met in the factories of Shenzhen, Zhu and his family immigrated to New York City in 1990 where he grew up in Sunset Park. Having earned his M.F.A. from Yale in 2020, he was the inaugural Innovation Fellow for Tsai CITY and Yale Schwarzman Center serving as the lead liaison between the two institutions. He created several large-scale public projects including A Universe in Strafford, New Hampshire, and CONSTELLATION on Governors Island, New York (2021). Zhu led community-oriented projects in New Haven, CT, working with the City’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Yale-New Haven Hospital to create public installations and healing spaces (2020-present). Zhu has exhibited widely between New York and Los Angeles, as well as internationally in France, China, England, and the Netherlands.