Cai Jin (; born 1965) is a Chinese painter best known for her oil paintings of the

banana A banana is an elongated, edible fruit – botanically a berry – produced by several kinds of large treelike herbaceous flowering plants in the genus '' Musa''. In some countries, cooking bananas are called plantains, distinguishing the ...

plant. Cai was born in

Tunxi Tunxi District () is the central district of Huangshan City, Anhui Province, eastern China. It has a population of (2010) and an area of . Tunxi District has jurisdiction over four subdistricts and five towns. The most well-known tourist spo ...

, Anhui Province, China in 1965. Cai studied art at the Anhui Teachers University in

Wuhu Wuhu () is a prefecture-level city in southeastern Anhui province of China, province, China. Sitting on the southeast bank of the Yangtze River, Wuhu borders Xuancheng to the southeast, Chizhou and Tongling to the southwest, Hefei City to the n ...

, China, graduating in 1985. She went on to participate in the Advanced Oil Painting Program of the

Central Academy of Fine Arts The Central Academy of Fine Arts or CAFA is an art academy under the direct charge of the Ministry of Education of China. The Manila Bulletin calls the school "China’s most prestigious and renowned art academy." It is considered one of the most ...

in Beijing, where she studied until 1991. She worked in New York between 1997 and 2007. Cai teaches at Tianjin Fine Arts Institute in Tianjin, China. Cai Jin has been featured in articles for th
ArtDaily
an
The Brooklyn Rail

Works

Cai Jin was inspired by a wilting banana plant that she discovered on a visit to her hometown in China. She took two rolls of photographs of the plant growing among weeds, and carried them with her for inspiration. For the next twenty years these remained her focus. Cai Jin has completed more than 400 works, mostly oil paintings. Her work is characterized by its

psychedelic Psychedelics are a subclass of hallucinogenic drugs whose primary effect is to trigger non-ordinary mental states (known as psychedelic experiences or "trips") and a perceived "expansion of consciousness". Also referred to as classic halluci ...

colors, such as pink, purple, blue, and especially red. Jin uses the image of the banana plant in her work to explore beauty, fertility, and sexuality. While she has primarily produced oils on canvas, Cai has painted on such materials as mattresses, silk quilts, cushions, women’s shoes, bicycle seats, and bath tubs. Her paintings explore vitality and beauty. In 2008, Cai deviated from her focus on the banana plant and began work on a series of landscape paintings. While the title of the series is ''Landscape'' the paintings are lyrical and organic, showing influences of both Western and traditional Chinese sources. These are evocative of submarine landscapes or cloud-filled skies and verge on abstraction, but without totally abandoning their origin in the world around her.

Exhibitions

* Cai Ji
Hanart TZ Gallery
Hong Kong, 2021 * Double X
Ethan Cohen Gallery
New York, New York, 2019 * RT021 Shanghai Contemporary Art Fair
Triumph Art Space
Beijing, China, 2015 * White Box 2014 Art & Design 100
WhiteBox Art Center
Beijing, China, 2014 * Return to the Source,

Chambers Fine Art Chambers Fine Art is an art gallery based in New York City and Beijing that specializes in Chinese Chinese art, contemporary art. Opened in New York in 2000 by Christophe Mao. Notable Chinese artists who had their first solo show in the United St ...

, Beijing and New York, 2013 * Cai Jin, National Art Museum of China, Beijing, 2012 * Cai Jin: Works on Paper, Hadrien de Montferrand Gallery, Beijing, 2011 * Red Tide - Cai Jin, Galerie PICI, Seoul, Korea, 2008 * Cai Jin, Beijing Cube Gallery, Beijing, 2007 * Cai Jin: Eros in Red, Hanart TZ Gallery, Hong Kong, 2005 * Beauty Banana Series: The Art of Cai Jin, Goedhuis Contemporary, New York, 2003 * Cai Jin: Sound in Red, Fujikawa Gallery/Next, Osaka, Japan, 2000 * Cai Jin, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art,

Cornell University Cornell University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university based in Ithaca, New York, United States. The university was co-founded by American philanthropist Ezra Cornell and historian and educator Andrew Dickson W ...

, USA, 2000 * Banana Plants Paintings, Alexander Ochs Galleries, Berlin, Germany, 1999 * Cai Jin: Off the Canvas, The Courtyard Gallery, Beijing * Cai Jin: Chinese Hand Studies from Life, Ethan Cohen Fine Art, New York, 1997 * Cai Jin: Recent Works, Kiang Gallery, Atlanta, USA, 1995 * Cai Jin's Oil Paintings, Art Gallery of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, 1991

External links

Cai Jin
at the Tate
Cai Jin
at Blouin Artinfo

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cai, Jin 1965 births Living people 20th-century Chinese painters 21st-century Chinese women artists 21st-century Chinese artists Painters from Anhui People from Huangshan 20th-century Chinese women painters Anhui Normal University alumni