Ding Yi (Chinese: 丁㇠; born 1962) is a Chinese contemporary artist currently based in Shanghai. A leading figure in Chinese contemporary art, Ding Yi works across painting, sculpture, installation, and architecture. Since the late 1980s, his signature motif—the cross “+” and its variant “x”—has served as a symbol of structure, rationality, and a visual language exploring the essence of being.
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Early life
Trained in both art and design, Ding Yi began experimenting with abstraction in 1982. During his student years, he developed a strong conviction about how to paint and what kind of artist he would become. Rejecting the Expressionism and Surrealism then prevalent in China, he chose a rational path “free from ideology.” Profoundly influenced by Western artists such as Piet Mondrian and Frank Stella during the 1985 “New Wave” art movement, Ding Yi launched his iconic Appearance of Crosses series in 1988, with a vision to create “an ultimate impression of abstraction”. At the time, he “designed” paintings that resembled plans for fabrics or blankets, using rulers and tape to eliminate traces of hand gestures —rigorously precise compositions formed through the repetition of the cross.
Career
Ding Yi's enduring method of incorporating crosses into his work emerged in the late 1980s. He executed a series of painting experiments called Appearance of Crosses, in which the artist adopted the shapes of x and + as a recurring motif with the intention of combining painting and design into a single form of expression. The cross, whether a + or an x, is a motif that the artist has declared as a formal mark without meaning, while the context of this work is the industrial-paced development of the urban environment in post-socialist China. His perennial idiom —-- the grid —-- speaks to a context in place and time, through its association with the frenetic communications networks and distinctive fluorescence of the contemporary city.
Style
The majority of his work features repetitions of the sign superimposed in different layers, colors, and rotations; the tiny, manually painted symbols cover the entire surface of large canvases, requiring a painstaking amount of precision and technical skill. By applying extremely rational design elements, Ding sought to "make painting that was not like painting," and for the past thirty years he has exclusively and relentlessly executed abstract paintings with shapes of small cross. The majority of his work features repetitions of the plus sign superimposed in different layers, colors, and rotations; the tiny, manually painted symbols cover the entire surface of large canvases, requiring a painstaking amount of precision and technical skill.
Institutional solo exhibitions
2026 Cosmotechnics: Ding Yi as a Planetary Code, Fondazione Querini Stampalia, Venice, Italy
2025 Ding Yi: Between Prediction and Retrospection, Mostyn, Llandudno, Wales, UK
2025 Ding Yi: The Winding Path, Contemporary Gallery Kunming & Anthropology Museum of Yunnan University, Yunnan, China
2024 Ding Yi: Prediction and Retrospection, Château La Côste, Le Puy-Sainte-Réparade, France
2024 Crisscrosses: Ding Yi’s Public Art for Twenty Years Minghua Sugar Factory, Yangpu Waterfront, Shanghai, China
2023 Ding Yi: Homeland and Journey, Ningbo Museum of Art & Huamao Museum of Art Education, Ningbo, China
2023 Ding Yi: Cross Galaxy, Shenzhen Museum of Contemporary Art and Urban Planning，Shenzhen, China
2023 Dimension of “Crosses”, Mojie Art Museum, Taiyuan, Shanxi, China
2022 Ding Yi: Flowing Infinity, TAG Art Museum, Qingdao, Shandong, China
2022 Multi-verse:Ding Yi in Tibet, Jebum-gang Art Center & Shide space, Lhasa, China
2021 The Dream of Permanence, West Bund Art & Design Fair, Shanghai
2020 Ding Yi: The Cross-Style, Long Museum, Chongqing, China
2018 十×30 Years — Ding Yi's Works, Guangdong Museum of Art, Guangzhou
Museum collections
His works are included in the collections of:
University of Sydney Art Collection, Australia
CDU Art Collection, Australia
Stichting Van Tuyckom Foundation, Brussels, Belgium
Chinese Modern Art Foundation, Ghent, Belgium
Centre Pompidou, Paris, France
DSL Collection, Paris, France
Mercedes-Benz Art Collection, Berlin, Germany
The City of Hamburg Germany, Hamburg, Germany
Yuz Foundation, Jakarta, Indonesia
Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japan
Morioka City Library, Morioka, Japan
Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, Korea
Sonje Museum of Contemporary Art, Gyeongju, Korea
The British Museum, London, UK
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK
Fosun Foundation, New York, USA
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA
UBS Art Collection, Zurich, Switzerland
Taikang Collection, Beijing, China
