Yuri Yuan

Yuri Yuan (b. 1996) was born in Harbin, China and raised in Singapore. She has received a BFA from Art Institute of Chicago and a MFA from Columbia University. The Critic John Yau has described Yuan’s paintings as “understated, but… signal[ing] a significant shift in consciousness.” Yuan takes as subject the everyday, capturing a mundanity and emptiness in even the most surreal scenes. Her delicate palette emphasizes a fundamental emptiness of the modern condition, a loneliness that follows her female protagonists from the city to the countryside, from reality into dream. By emphasizing the unexplainable, Yuan’s works represent a new, achingly contemporary sea change for figurative painting.

Yuan holds an MFA in Visual Arts from Columbia University, New York, NY, and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL. She was a recipient of the Helen Frankenthaler Scholarship at Columbia University in 2020, and the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant in 2019, 2022, and 2024. Her recent solo exhibitions include Hide and Seek at Alexander Berggruen, New York, NY (2025), and A Thousand Ships at Make Room, Los Angeles, CA (2023). Yuan’s work has been exhibited at Ivory Gate Gallery, Shanghai; Galerie Rolando Anselmi, Rome, IT; Haverkampf Leistenschneider, Berlin, GE; Christie’s, NY; Villepin Gallery, Hong Kong; Alexander Berggruen, NY; Make Room Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; Simon Lee Gallery, London, UK; Moss Arts Center, Blacksburg, VA; Lenfest Center for the Arts, New York, NY; Sullivan Galleries, Chicago, IL; among others. Her work is represented in the public collections of the Columbus Museum of Art, Columbus, OH; The Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, CA; and X Museum, Beijing. She was an artist in residence at Silver Art Projects, New York, in 2024, and was named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list in 2024. Yuan currently lives and works in New York, NY.