Studio Visit · Sun Yifei | Wheat Fields, Aliens, and a Few Cheap Period Costumes
▲ Sun Yifei’s art tool
Like many artists who have long been based in Beijing, Sun Yifei’s studio is located in Yanjiao, nearly a two-hour drive from Beijing. This is our first visit to his studio since his solo exhibition The Interpellation of An Alien in May.
In front of the store right next to the studio entrance sits the “crop field” he used when creating the piece Crop Circle Mystery featured in his solo exhibition.
Prior to this, Sun Yifei had never elaborated on his creative process. Without seeing these props with our own eyes, it would be difficult to imagine that the somewhat surreal visual spectacles in his works are actually derived, for the most part, from the crudest yet most reality-grounded on-site constructions.
Crop Circle Mystery
2026
150 × 200 cm
In this process, elements such as the crop field are detached from their original context of viewing and cultural reference, temporarily extracted from the order of reality: they become open-ended, malleable visual materials and fragmentary scenes, which are ultimately re-translated through the artist’s selection and orchestration.
It could be said that behind Sun Yifei’s creative language, one foot always remains planted in reality.
It is precisely for this reason that we can see, in Mermaid, a pool scattered with playing cards;
Mermaid
2025
Acrylic spray paint on canvas
200 × 150 cm
Modern Era
2025
Acrylic spray paint on canvas
150 × 120 cm
Acrylic spray paint on canvas
160 × 200 cm
These somewhat “whimsical” or even grotesque visual scenes, and even the image “fragments” that bear no relation to one another, all once existed briefly in the real world, in the course of Sun Yifei’s creative process. They were ultimately re-orchestrated, pieced together, and “stitched” by the artist, and placed into the entirely new context he actively constructed.
▲ Behind the scence of Sun’s recent solo exhibition
And when we return to the canvas carrying the signifiers of these images, beyond the theatrical narrative, we once again encounter the artist’s preservation and re-creation of these “slices of reality.” They acquire entirely new modes of association—some no longer follow their original visual logic, colliding while simultaneously complementing each other; retaining trace of reality, yet constantly shifting the direction of their meaning within these new combinations.
Illusional Screen
2021
Acrylic spray paint on canvas
120 × 150 cm
When I first heard this question, I didn’t immediately start painting—in fact, it prompted me to reflect: what exactly is “Chinese”?
If translated into painting, what form would “Chinese” actually take? In my imagination, people might tend to favor things imbued with Chinese elements, but in essence, we still carry a certain core derived from various cultures, only applying a logic that “sinicizes” it.
So I chose ancient costume dramas—they’re an industrial product, yet they simultaneously preserve a certain form, that is, fragments of China’s clothing from the past. Because as an industrial product, it can’t fully restore the so-called authentic state of that era; it merely extracts certain fragmentary forms and layers them on top. I felt that, for me, this had some points of overlap with what I had in mind.
Close Encounters of the Third Kind
2025
Acrylic spray paint on canvas
200 × 150 cm
▲ The Night Watch, La-la Land, On site & details
At the same time, these costumes correspond to certain theatrical images we’re familiar with, such as “Trial by Three Judicial Departments,” which comes from an excerpt in classic Chinese Opera “Yutang Chun”. I hybridized these two themes together, and this actually also relates to how I handle the picture and my choice of this particular image as a connecting form.
▲ Interpellation of An Alien Exhibition Site
Swipe for more
La-la Land
2025
200 × 150 cm
The Night Watch
2026
200 × 300 cm
▲ Fu Gui Hall, On site & details
▲ The Pond Exhibition Site
The texts and images Sun Yifei encounters in his daily life—whether the philosophical interpretations of Žižek and Lacan, or the research and historical examination of historical facts—stir his thoughts and open his imagination, like a stone cast into water, rippling outward, unfurling and weaving together some kind of “narrative.”
The image “fragments,” drawn from wildly different, even entirely unrelated sources, are “stitched” by Sun Yifei into a context he has constructed; new connections are created, and the images are endowed with new significations through their mutual overlapping and mutual interpretation, and it is precisely through this that the artist unfolds his narrative.
The Pond
2024
Acrylic spray paint on wood , Fiberglass