Yafeng Duan

b. 1973, Hebei, China
Currently lives and works in Berlin

Yafeng Duan works in abstract painting, combining gestural mark-making with multi-layered paint washes. Her paintings are richly colourful and expressive, drawing on influences from both traditional Chinese ink painting and contemporary Western abstract art. Duan was born in Hebei in northern China in 1973, and her father was a notable figure in traditional Chinese ink painting. She studied this traditional artform at the Central Academy for Fine Arts in Beijing from 1999 – 2001. After moving to Germany in 2004, she studied painting at Alanus University of Arts and Social Sciences and then undertook an extended period of study at Bauhaus University Weimar, graduating in 2011.

This combination of Eastern and Western training has informed her approach to painting. Writer Karina Abdusamalova states, “Soulfulness is an intrinsic quality of Yafeng Duan’s art. By experimenting with the inherent aesthetic potential of nature, she intuitively creates an inner world of shapes and textures - a mental space where time is frozen and gravity is suspended, a place that allows the viewer to reconnect and breathe.”^[1] This intuitive, meditative approach appears in the work as splashes of colour, gestural marks, and paint layering that neither suggests nor negates visual depth. Through these works, one can interpret universal themes such as creative void, yin and yang/darkness and light, temporality, flow, and transformation.

Art Historian Harald F. Theiss states, “Yafeng Duan's intuitive and at the same time-controlled application of colour and paint alternates […] between the powerful various sizes of colour fields, the strong, sculptural brushstrokes reminiscent of earthy formations, and fine translucent, watery layers of paint.”^[2] Theiss describes an approach to painting that is engaged with material investigation and technical processes, and yet remains open-ended, exploratory, and expressive. He also stated of Duan’s work, “The images function like a kind of seismographic recording of sensory impressions – an attempt to represent the invisible.” Duan’s making the unseen seen offers viewers of her work a uniquely compelling experience through the medium of paint.

Yafeng Duan has exhibited extensively in museums and galleries in Germany and China, including notable venues such as the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, Galerie Michael Janssen in Berlin, Neues Museum in Weimar, Galerie Rothamel in Erfurt, and Alexander Ochs Private Berlin, and Hebei Museum in Shijiazhuang. Duan also has representation at Gallery Lechbinska in Zurich, Switzerland and Dubai, UAE.

Gow Langsford has represented Yafeng Duan since 2024.

[1] Karina Abdusamalova, Form of the Formless, Gallery Michael Janssen exhibition text.
[2] Harald F. Theiss, About Color Surfaces, Traces and other Abstractions: Fragmentary Thoughts on the Paintings of Yafeng Duan.