Xinyi Cheng

The paintings of Xinyi Cheng are vehicles through which the artist explores different aspects of fantasy and desire. From a vantage at once embedded and removed, she catalogues moments or fragments—her paintings always existing in a specific relation to time—of particular intimacy. Though the behaviour of her muses may often seem banal, candid, the paintings are laden also with a longing poised delicately on the edge of fulfillment, like an itch impossible to scratch, or with the melancholic sentiment in the face of this impossibility.

Cheng (b. 1989, Wuhan, China) lives and works in Paris. She received her MFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2014 and completed the Rijksakademie residency program in 2018. Selected solo exhibitions include “Seen Through Others”, Lafayette Anticipations (Paris, 2022), “The Horse with Eye Blinders”, Hamburger Bahnhof (Berlin, 2020), and “The Hands of a Barber, They Give In…” Balice Hertling (Paris, 2017), her first solo show with the gallery. Her works have also featured in group exhibitions such as “Portrait of a Collection: Selected Works from the Pinault Collection” SONGEUN Art and Cultural Foundation (Seoul, 2024);  Balice Hertling (Paris, 2022 and 2017); Renaissance Society (Chicago, 2021), 13th Shanghai Biennale: “Bodies of Water,” Power Station of Art (Shanghai, 2021); Bourse de Commerce - Pinault Collection (Paris, 2021), and Palais de Tokyo (Paris, 2020). In 2019 she was awarded the Baloise Art Prize.