Fanyu Lin
By Jonathan Goodman, October 28, 2026
Fanyu Lin, The Embrace No. 4, 2024. Watercolor, 4 x 6 in. (10.2 x 15.2 cm)
Included in the exhibition "A Line that Forgets Its Name"
Born and raised in Chengdu, in the southwest of Mainland China, artist Fanyu Lin moved to Beijing to study architecture. After receiving her bachelor’s degree from the Central Academy of Fine Arts there, she took a master’s degree, again in architecture, in New York City from Columbia University. That was in 2012. Lin has stayed in New York since then; as her practice gradually shifted from architecture toward fine art, she took on painting as her main activity.
For a person of Lin’s brush skills, which she learned as a child in China, the change from architecture to painting makes sense. In conversation, it becomes clear that Lin seeks a middle ground that would enable her to sustain extended experiments as she combines abstract and figurative styles. Much of the time Lin’s compositions can look highly abstract, but even when they do, bits and pieces of realism come to the fore, usually on a surface of a flat expanse of color. It is also true that Lin regularly produces figurative efforts. But it is most true that she works up a mixture of both.
In this sense Lin is neither particularly Chinese nor Western. It can be successfully argued that some of the abstract brushwork in her efforts derives from her early youth, when she was learning to write Chinese and, likely, practicing calligraphy. The efflorescences of her strokes result in effusions of the brush in her current art. By incorporating these abstract gestures into a generally representational context, Lin paints both ways, being interested in the tension between what can be seen as real and what cannot.
Thus Lin works in a double manner successfully. In her painting titled The Embrace No. 1, 2024, she addresses eroticism by drawing and painting people in embrace creating overt statements of sensuality. Even at first glance, the imagery stands recognizably as two people unclothed. But it is also true that the couple are painted with expressionistic emphasis—-to the point where some visual dissonance, deliberate and beautiful, occurs. This enables her to maintain an ongoing conversation with current modes of abstraction, as well as presentations that serve a figurative purpose.
It is also true that some of the earlier work is purely figurative, as we see in the small piece from 2021, Fall on Me. Two thirds of the image depict two walls meeting in a corner, the left side darker than the right. The bottom third is taken up by a large mattress, while in the middle we see a naked couple embracing. The man leans on the woman, and both stare at the viewer, their backs oriented toward the ceiling, with their faces turned sideways. It becomes clear that the embrace is more than an embrace.
The frank eroticism of the picture is notable in that such activity rarely takes place in traditional Chinese art. But we must remember that Lin is of a new generation of artists from the Mainland, and has internalized many Western freedoms, including the frank treatment of love making. New York’s freedoms have not been lost on her. Although sexuality is a difficult topic to address, Lin does so gracefully.
But Lin complicates her theme with a mid-size painting, also called Fall on Me, from 2024. Here the composition is much more expressionistically abstract, with swathes of gray surrounding a white figure. Her back is flat on a support and white legs extend upward toward the top of the painting. The entire body can be made out. Yet the brushwork is expressionistically loose, to the point where we almost lose the figurative image. This evocative complicated figure works in contradistinction to the simple, direct image of the previous work.
The piece called Unfinished, 2025, taken from the “Riding” series, is a mid-size work whose affinities are several: the composition could be seen as a free study in black, of four seated figures in meditation. Or it could be a set of abstract brushwork iterations lined up in a row. Calligraphy seems to be a part of the image’s making. The work actually may be representing all three concerns at once. The point is that Lin’s art provides us with a mixture of viewing opportunities by skillfully mixing possibilities for study, and whatever way we choose to interpret the image, it is clear it has been beautifully made.
Fanyu Lin, Home No. 1 (Study for “Herselves series”), 2023. Watercolor on paper, 9 x 12 in.
Evidently, Lin maintains interests in sensual portrayals in her art. In Riding No. 1 (2024), the work, at first glance, comes across as a three-panel abstraction; the left and middle panels show a nude woman with black hair riding the man beneath her. The right panel presents a variation to the figure on the left. We do not see her entire body—only her back. In the bottom left corner, we see a red sphere, to whose right a pinkish wash has been developed. We remember that red is the color of passion; it does not directly represent the body but eludes bodily atmosphere.
As can be seen from the descriptions above, Lin’s efficacy as a painter depends on her being able to follow several art approaches at once. Part of this decision is accomplished by technical skill, and part by the expression of themes. It is a difficult thing to do, that is, handle several tasks at once. Certainly, Lin has precedents; many people painting today attempt to merge differing subjects and styles. But Lin does create a great gap—between Chinese and Western ways of thinking and working. The results are notably original.
One small painting from the series “A Thousand and One Nights" again takes on a double bias of realism and abstraction. The background, a greenish yellow, is broken up by a curving stripe of brown. Two hand-like images are set in the center and center right of the painting, but the imagery is hardly realist. Again and again, Lin stands on the cusp between something recognizable and abstract flourish. This enables her to represent many kinds of effects, not least the rich, remarkable exchange of what we actually see and what we imagine, merging both approaches to painting.
Embrace No. 4 (2024), the last painting to be discussed in this article, consists of two reclining nudes seen from the side. The woman, who may well be Lin herself, lies on her side facing the audience. In front of her lies a partner with his back to the viewer, taking place against a white, blue, and brown ground. The work can serve as a complicated abstraction, in which forms collide without figurative recognition. As both a figurative and non-figurative vision, the painting serves its audience well.
Lin has spoken of her wish to straddle realism and non-figuration. As I have written, this desire is not isolated from the rest of the art world. Lin belongs to a group of artists today who test limits and invigorate their work by including a variety of effects. Part of this is the spirit of the time; a broad eclecticism is key to the way contemporary artists work. But most of Lin’s experimentation, shared by many different kinds of artists, is key in this case to both theme and manner of working. Her imaginative spirit, as evidenced by her move from Beijing to New York city, comes alive in the freedoms her paintings embody.
Lin is close to entering her mid-career. She writes about art for the Chinese edition of the Financial Times. She is also doing interviews with known members of the New York art world. So she is involved in the excitement and ambition of many artists working in the city. There was a time when one could honestly consider how Chinese a work might be, but that speculation dissolves in light of Lin’s multiple interests, not the least of which is New York’s abstraction of Western origins. As her excellent work shows, art is no longer of particular cultures so much as it is an expression of wideness of interest. It looks like Lin is a far distance from China.
Fanyu Lin, Women and Dog (Herselves series), 2023. Acrylic on canvas, triptych; overall: 36 x 72 in.