Born in 1961 in Xinjiang Province, Qin Feng is a leading international ink artist and one of the foremost representatives of China's avant-garde movement. He studied mural painting at the Shandong University of Art and Design in the early 1980s and was one of only two people in Shandong Province who radically experimented with imported styles of contemporary art during that period. Because of his involvement in the Chinese avant-garde movement, the German government invited Qin to curate an exhibit promoting cultural exchange between China and Germany. In 1996, Qin moved to Berlin where he began to synthesize Western modernism and the Chinese ink-painting tradition and subsequently became the first Asian artist to show at the Raab Gallery.

Through Qin, the legacy of ink-painting is manifested in intensely emotional and explosive works. Hi intention is to make art that is meaningful to the new generation in China as well as the West, without jettisoning his link with Chinese brush-painting. Upon moving to the United States, Qin Feng earned a fellowship and residency with the prestigious MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire and has exhibited and performed at the Asia Pacific Museum in California, the Asia Society and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. 

A master of coalescence, Qin Feng seamlessly blends together the centuries-old art of Chinese ink painting and the modern concepts of the Abstract Expressionists in arresting series of meditative images. Bold brushstrokes, ethereal trails and plays on positive and negative space take his images beyond their aesthetic beauty to represent delicate balances, such as that of nature and man. Embodied with motion and representations of time, his pieces poetically combine Western gestures and Chinese Calligraphy -  a concept of cultural contrast that is further emphasized by the use of tea and coffee as materials, and his choice of colour. His artworks are both culturally resplendent, as well as modern marvels of contemporary art. 

Inspired by his upbringing in Xinjiang, a multicultural intersection of the silk roads, Qin has often incorporated Chinese, Uighur, Arabic, and Russian languages into his work. He has won several art awards from the City of Berlin and the Vermont Art Center and has exhibited in major galleries and museums like the Goedhuis Contemporary in New York, The Beijing Museum of Contemporary Art in China, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Feng Lives and works in Beijing, China and Boston, Massachusetts. 

Collections

The British Museum,
The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,
The Fogg Art Museum Harvard University,
Yale University Art Gallery,
Smith College Museum of Art,
The Ford Foundation,
The MacDowell Colony,
The Annie Wong Foundation,
The National Arts Foundation (France),
The U.S. State Department (“Art in Embassies”) 

Selected Awards, Lectures, and Performance

2008 Nominated and selected as Research Associate, Fairbank Center for East Asian Research, Harvard University
2007 Sotheby’s, Christie’s, and Poly auctions (from the mid-90s to present)
2005 Syndicat National des Antiquaires at Le Louvre, Paris and other international art fairs 1(992 to present)
2003 Zero Space Ink Performance, Asia Society and Museum, New York
2001 Fellowship and Residency, MacDowell Colony, New Hampshire
2000 Award from the Vermont Art Center
1998 Art Award from the City of Berlin


Invited lectures at Harvard University, the Leucorea, Martin Luther University, Halle/Wittenberg; Berlin Art University HDK; International Society–Boston; Tufts University, Massachusetts; Emerson College, Boston; and Mobius Gallery, Boston

2018
Splendors of the Sun and Moon - China Contemporary Art Exhibition, Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice
Chinese Art in the Post-Mao Era, Ethan Cohen New York, New York
Contemporary Calligraphy, Galerie du Monde, Hong Kong (Group exhibition)

2017
Changing China: Contemporary Ink Painting, Michael Goedhuis, New York
Summer Exhibition, Galerie du Monde, Hong Kong
Ben Brown Fine Arts at Art Basel in Hong Kong 2017
Meeting Angels: Qin Feng in Germany, Solo Exhibition, Metropolitan Gallery, Hamburg

2016
Waiting for Qin Feng, Solo Exhibition, San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice
Qin Feng: Portraits and Desire, Solo Exhibition, Ben Brown Fine Arts, Hong Kong
Qin Feng, Solo Exhibition, Michael Goedhuis, London
Qin Feng Solo Exhibition, Asia Art Center, Taipei
Contemporary - Talented Express, Art100, Hong Kong
Humanistic Nature and Society - A Peoples Biography, Shanghai Himalayas Museum, Shanghai
Borders and Bridges International Contemporary Art Exhibition, Museum of Contemporary Art Beijing

2015
Pace Prints, The Armory Show 2015
Galerie du Monde, ARTINTERNATIONAL and Art Central Hong Kong

2014   
ArtStage, Singapore 
Longing Landscape, ODE TO ART, Singapore

2013   
Goedhuis Contemporary Art Museum, London 
Ethan Cohen Art Gallery New York
Crow Collection of Asian Art Museum, Dallas

2012 
Raab Gallery, Berlin 
The Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum, Miami
Shang-Shang International Art Museum, Beijing

2011 
Ethan Cohen Fine Arts, New York
The Opposite House, Beijing

2009 
Pace Prints Gallery, New York
Shang Shang International Art Museum, Beijing

2008 
Asia Center, Harvard University
Beijing Museum of Contemporary Art, China
Goedhuis Contemporary, New York and London 

2007 
Raab Gallery, Berlin 
Ethan Cohen Fine Arts, New York
Art Beatus Gallery, Hong Kong
798 Gallery, New York

2006 
Goedhuis Contemporary, New York and London 
Modern Art Museum, Beijing, China 
Townhouse Gallery, Cairo, Egypt 

2005 
Toll Collect, Berlin, Germany
Ethan Cohen Fine Arts, New York

2004 
Raab Gallery, Berlin, Germany
Art Beatus Gallery, Hong Kong
HaiShangShan International Art Center, Shanghai, China

2003 
Ethan Cohen Fine Arts, New York

2002 
HaiShangShan International Art Center, Shanghai, China
Tao Water Gallery, Cape Cod, Massachusetts

2001 
MacDowell Colony, New Hampshire, U.S
Revolving Museum, Boston, Massachusetts
Asian Cultural Center, New York, 
Federal Foreign Office, Berlin, Germany

2000 
Tremont Gallery, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.