After returning to Shanghai, he was a bench worker in a clock factory and spent half a year learning to do mechanical drawing. A sketch, titled The Sycamore and Figs, which was done in 1976, is on display at the exhibition.

Jin started to take painting seriously when he made a series of illustrations for Blossoms. The sketches outlined the age-old landscape of Shanghai, and blended the past and present, fiction and facts. They have a special intertextuality with the novel, says Xie Xiaodong, the curator of the exhibition.

"But Jin's ambition didn't stop there. Over the past 10 years, he has created a complete system of visual expression that covers a variety of subjects, media and techniques. Either through text or painting, Jin is dedicated to the search for the distinctive tonality of things, in the hopes of catching the sparkle in a multitude of events and characters," Xie adds.

Xie Dingwei, founding director of Bund One Art Museum, says he is impressed by Jin's wild imagination and ingenious use of colors.

"Bund One Art Museum has presented some important Western art exhibitions over the past few years and people sometimes get this impression that we do exhibitions from overseas exclusively, but that's not the case. Jin's art reflects a distinctive Shanghai style, which makes our museum an ideal location for this exhibition," Xie Dingwei says.

If you go

Blossoms: Jin Yucheng Solo Exhibition

10 am-6 pm, final entry by 5:30 pm, Nov 25-Jan 28, 2024.

Bund One Art Museum, 1 Zhongshan East One Road, Huangpu district, Shanghai.