Bio

YU JEN-CHIH
ARTIST PAINTER & ART CRITIC

Painter, wood engraver and art critic, born in 1977 in Taipei, Taiwan into a family of artists and intellectuals. He studied Fine Arts at Tunghai University (Taiwan) from 1995 to 1999, followed by a Research Masters in Cinema History at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.

From a young age, Yu Jen-chih experimented with various painting and engraving techniques, and he participated in two solo exhibitions in his hometown. Between 2008 and 2014, he took part in several group exhibitions in Bahrain, Colombia (Bogota), Ukraine (Municipal Museum of Dnipropetrovsk), as well as in galleries and cultural institutes in France (Paris, Dinard, Brest, Quimper), in Italy (Avellino), in Georgia (Georgian National Music Center, Tbilisi) and in Argentina (MACLA, La Plata).

In 2014, Yu Jen-chih presented his works in a solo exhibition at the Red Zone Arts gallery in Geneva and again, in 2019, at Red Zone Arts in Frankfurt am Main. In 2017, the Kwang-Hua Information & Culture Center in Hong Kong scheduled a retrospective entitled “Between titans and giants” for his engraved works.
In 2018, Yu Jen-chih produced a 720 cm x 122 cm wood engraving for his solo exhibition at the Moyens du Bord, the art center of the Manufacture des Tabacs in Morlaix. In November 2019, the Red Zone Arts gallery presented him at the Discovery Art Fair in Frankfurt am Main and since 2020, the Alisan Fine Arts gallery (Hong Kong) has represented him in Hong Kong as well as on international fairs. In Paris, Yu Jen-chih’s works were shown at the Galerie Raulin Pompidou as part of solo exhibitions (2020, 2022) and are on display at the Galerie dHD. In the fall of 2023, his large formats were brought together in an exhibition, “Torment and Ecstasy”, at the Maison de l’Erdre which was sponsored by the City of Nantes – Nantes Métropole.

Yu Jen-chih has also co-authored several bibliophile books, including Ce qui me signe (with Michel Bohbot) and Mesures Démesures (with Werner Lambersy, CMJN éditions).

Yu Jen-chih is an art critic for magazines and newspapers in France, Taiwan, Hong Kong and China. He is the author of literary dossiers in direct collaboration with Milan Kundera, Carlos Fuentes, Fernando Arrabal and Massimo Rizzante, and of written portraits of artists such as Mikhaïl Kobakhidzé, Amos Gitai, Patricia Erbelding, Tony Soulié, Bertrand Menguy and Zhu Xiao -mei.

In May 2011, INK Literary Monthly edited Interior/Exterior: Still Lifes and Landscapes, a work which brings together twenty texts by Yu Jen-chih on art, all published between 2007 and 2008 as part of a monthly column. The book was re-edited in November 2013 for China, by New Star Press.

Yu Jen-chih has been living and working in France since 1999.