At the Future Art & Design Award UK 2025 (Spring Edition), artist Yi Zhu was awarded the Gold Award for his thought-provoking and symbolically rich painting My World and This World No.02.
With a creative career spanning printmaking, illustration, commercial design, and now painting, Yi Zhu’s work is rooted in the methodology of deconstructivism and reconstructivism—exploring the tension between materiality and spirituality, and the emotional expansion and contraction of life.
Inspired by ancient Chinese visual symbols such as Majiayao pottery and Han Dynasty paper cuttings, Zhu reinterprets these forms through a surreal and symbolic lens. His winning piece juxtaposes contrasting worlds—internal vs. external, subjective vs. objective—expressed through disjointed limbs, bold color contrasts, and distorted forms. The result is a visual narrative exploring human emotion, dislocation, and existential perception in today’s turbulent world.
The artist describes his work as a response to both personal introspection and global realities—infusing philosophy, color theory, and deeply rooted cultural symbols to construct a new visual language for the soul.
Please give us a brief introduction about yourself and your creative background:
Deconstructivism and reconstructivism in painting by Yi Zhu Yi Zhu is an artist in the great social changes in China who has a mindset of evolving. He has witnessed the tremendous change of China's social and economic structure from the Mao Zedong era to the Deng Xiaoping era, which has influenced his worldview. In the early days, he engaged in printmaking and illustration, creating many works with unique visual compositions. When working in the field of commercial design, he led his own design company, pioneering the Chinese market in the design, production, and installation of point-of-sale advertising in many market channels. Facing the various social sensations and the struggle and longing of human nature in the competition within the business field, Yi Zhu created many prints and oil paintings, positioning himself as the creator of deconstructivism and reconstructivism in painting, in the context of Chinese and world contemporary art. In my early days, I was engaged in bookbinding, illustration, and woodcut printmaking. I created illustrations for the novels of Mr. Shen Congwen and Mr. Wang Meng, giants of modern and contemporary Chinese literature, which were then published and exhibited at the National Art Museum of China. Later, I founded my own design company, where I designed for offline markets, promoted point - of - sale experiences, and did packaging design for international fast - moving consumer goods companies in the Chinese market. As a result, I won the Best Creativity Trophy and the Best Supplier Trophy from a well - known brand's Chinese subsidiary. During the global pandemic, due to my insights into life and some other reasons, witnessing the ups and downs of life during the epidemic, I started to create a large number of oil paintings and prints. The impact of the tension and contraction of life's breath on me was so strong that I had an intense desire to express this physical perception of life. Exhalation represents tension, and inhalation represents contraction. Life should not be suppressed; the essence of life is freedom.
What inspired you to pursue a career in creative / art?
Experiences, together with the understanding of colors and the imagination after in-depth insights, give rise to a creative desire to express oneself.
Can you describe the creative process behind your work and what motivates you to create?
Yi Zhu focuses on the physical attribute of life and sense the expansion and contraction. Deconstructing materiality and reconstructing spirituality, he creates the spiritual world of his imagination. Uniqueness, imagination, creativity, and freshness can be found in the works of Yi Zhu. He constructs the physicality of life and spiritual catharsis among species, human and space. His works preserve the contraction and expansion of life. I am not just painting. I am painting thoughts. Yi Zhu's creativity is as follows: “I express my subjective feelings and attitudes toward life on canvas, while sensing the inspection of my works from lives outside of the canvas. I create on the basis of species, life and space, elements of the focus of the society. It is creativity on the level of imagination to reconstruct the spiritual world. Through my works, I explore the complex feelings and desires behind life, which are infusing my works with deeper dimensions and touches.” Yi Zhu’s creativity and worldview; My creation consists of the materiality and the abstraction. In the physical world, I create a spiritual world of the abstraction. I deconstruct the structure of the materiality, and reconstruct my spiritual world on abstraction. The fundamental of life is to breathe. The exhale is expansion while the inhale is contraction. This is the physicality of life. In the social context, there is attitude and spirit to the inhale and the exhale of the human physicality. This is a relationship of deconstruction, a realization of the reconstruction of the visuals for the spiritual world. I have been deeply influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein’s philosophy on logic and propositions, along with the viewpoints such as “you can break red vessels but not the red color”. My creative philosophy in painting is deconstructivism and reconstructivism. I reconstruct the new visuals in a parallel world, with the deconstruction of the materiality of the physical world. I decompose myself to pursue the struggle and dignity of the fundamental of life in a parallel world. A purely idealistic subjective expression. Materiality to the world of desires and breathing for survival is as the spirituality of humans to the luxury of expansion and contraction of breathing for life. I’m not going into this world of structures and rigid languages. I’m creating a new space of visual languages for the position of the soul, as a bridge connecting the virtual to the real. I enable the perception of the vibrant colors and dignity of life in my works. What needs to vanish is not my virtual spirit but the rigid thoughts for life from the rigid structures of the world. This is a question of the perception of the origination of life. Because of my paintings, you see yourself. Deconstruct materiality. Reconstruct spirituality.
What was the most exciting or challenging part of creating the work you submitted to the competition?
Since I was very young, my world has been isolated from the outside world. I have always been afraid of the uncertainties of the outside world, yet I also have a longing for it. The disparity between my world and the outside world makes me feel uneasy. I am obsessed with painting. My inspiration comes from the symbols of the painted pottery patterns of the Majiayao culture in the upper reaches of the Yellow River in China and the symbols of paper-cutting from the Han Dynasty in China. I overlap the tension and contraction of these symbols with the tension and contraction of the emotions in contemporary life, and reconstruct the spiritual world of my imagination and creation. I base my painting language on both my world and the outside world to perceive life. Through my works, I explore the complex emotions and desires hidden behind the evasion of life. I try to pursue the mutual perception between the tension and contraction of life and the paintings. The ancient cultural symbols of China provide me with the relationship between the ancient emotions behind these elements and today's life. In this work, I depict the perception of life towards the tension and contraction of this world, adding a contemplative dimension and tactile sense to my works. What excited me when I was creating this series of works was the visual language and the visual presentation of the images that I discovered. I don't like the rigid attitude towards life brought about by rigid structures. At the level of imagination, I create the tension and contraction of the physical properties of the essence of life, which is like the process of breathing. Due to the influence of the outside world, each breath of life reflects an attitude, and this is how my visual language and visual presentation of the images that can perceive the tension and contraction of life came into being. The visual language and visual presentation of the images created should not be a repetition of the existing ones. Only by finding new visual languages of images can there be progress. My sense of color and my concept of color are characterized by wildness, savagery, and roughness. However, when these colors are placed together within the space of the canvas, they convey a sense of breathability as well as the emotions and attitudes towards life of contemporary people. In my creative process, I constantly draw on Ludwig Wittgenstein's idea that "you can break a red vessel, but you can't break the color red" to influence my subjective metaphysical perception both within and outside the frame of my paintings. My world and this world No.02 a description of the works The creation of this oil painting has a strong symbolic meaning and a surreal style. In the picture, a sharp contrast of colors is used. The pink and blue backgrounds create a powerful visual impact, which may represent two different worlds. One is the inner, subjective "my world", and the other is the external, objective "this world". The limb parts in the picture, such as hands, feet and eyes, seem to be detached from different bodies. Their postures and positions give people a sense of distortion and disharmony. This may symbolize the confusion, struggle and uneasiness of an individual when facing the external world. The eyes are especially prominent and may represent observation, perception and the examination of reality. The brushstrokes are bold and the lines are smooth yet irregular, which adds a sense of dynamism and tension to the picture. This way of expression can effectively convey the complexity of the inner world and the unpredictability of the external world. Through colors, forms and compositions, the work successfully expresses the relationship between the individual and the external world, and conveys an inner conflict and a profound reflection on reality. The work constructs a state of the intertwined contradictions between the weak life of individuals and their living environment in the conflicts of geopolitics, culture, war, immigration, environment and so on in today's world.
How would you describe your creative style and the key characteristics that define your work?
Style: Surreal expression under the creative methodology of deconstruction and reconstruction. Key features: It has a strong symbolic meaning and is of surrealism.
What has been your experience participating in the competition? Were you satisfied with the process and results?
I'm very satisfied. I enjoy seeking new visual languages in art. This competition platform has allowed me to see the opportunities and prospects for creating new visual languages in painting.
Where do you see the future of the art and design industry heading in the next 5-10 years?
AI image generation is increasingly integrating with artists, and a new generation of artists who take AI technology as the underlying logic will become the mainstream in creation. Artists who feed the AI data stream will be from the new generation.
Follow the Artist:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zhuyi515/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yi.zhu.399041
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