A colourful, cartoon-style painting of lively baseball fans in a stadium; people cheer, wear uniforms, wave hands, and hold a “Give me a ball or strike out” sign. White birds fly across a vivid red sky, and a scoreboard reads “Home of the Busters.”.

Yan Jingzhou Residency

Yan Jingzhou (b. 1995, Hebei Province, China) will be in residence at Studio Voltaire from June to August 2026.

Yan’s paintings explore humour, using and distorting cartoon-style kitsch aesthetics to bring out the tensions of the images. Central to his paintings is ‘Buster’, a motif and sometime character, who often appears amongst the artist’s surreal, uncanny tableaux of everyday moments.  

During his residency, Yan will expand the cultural references within his practice, using his time in London to research and identify imagery, symbols and rhythms from the city’s daily life and art institutions. He is particularly interested in the encounters and frictions that can arise from cross-disciplinary cultural exchange and how these can make the formerly familiar seem strange again. 

Through conversations and on-site and field research, the artist will examine how his painting practice and its subjects are received in different cultural contexts, and how he can create cross-cultural visual languages in his work. 

  1. Yan Jingzhou (b. 1995, Hebei Province, China) is an artist who lives and works in Beijing, China. Selected solo exhibitions include: Love Is Love, Tang Contemporary Art, Hong Kong (2025); All Around Buster Town, Tang Contemporary Art, Beijing, China (2024); Buster’s Love, Tang Contemporary Art, Bangkok, Thailand (2023). Selected Group Exhibitions Layered Skin, Tang Contemporary Art, Hong Kong (2023); First Encounter, Yue Art Museum, Beijing, China (2022); Jungle of All Forms, Haihui Art Museum, Zhengzhou, China (2022); The 9th Beijing International Art Biennale, National Art Museum of China, Beijing, China (2022); The 5th Poetic Living Festival: Poetry and Songs for Life Art Exhibition, Tianqiao Performing Arts Center, Beijing, China (2020); Xunxun Exhibition Series V: The Garden of Forking Paths, Parkview Green Art Center, Beijing, China (2020). 

    His works have been showcased at major international art fairs, including Art Basel Hong Kong 2025, ART021 Beijing 2025, ART021 Shanghai 2023, Art Taipei 2023 & 2024 and Art Busan 2023. Yan graduated from the School of Arts and Design, Hebei Normal University, China in 2018 and received his Master’s degree in Oil Painting from the China Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) in 2022.

    1. Yan Jingzhou Yan, The King of Utopia, 2022. Acrylic on canvas. Image courtesy of the artist and Tang Contemporary.
    2. Yan Jingzhou, Buster Remix, 2025. Acrylic on canvas. Image courtesy of the artist, Tang Contemporary Art and a private collector.
    3. Yan Jingzhou, A Five Minute Hug, 2022. Acrylic on canvas. Image courtesy of the artist, Tang Contemporary Art and a private collector.
    4. Yan Jingzhou, Yesterday Us Happy to Meet You Today/ 昨天的我们-认识你-很高兴, 2022. Acrylic on canvas. Image courtesy of the artist, Tang Contemporary Art and a private collector.