In a splash, it's graffiti

Chen Yingjie says he is the first person to combine Chinese wash-and-ink paintings with graffiti. The 22-year-old now finds himself invited by international luxury brands to paint as a performance, with clients including auto giants Subaru and Volvo, sportswear Adidas Originals and French design house Louis Vuitton.
In a recent collaborative project with Adidas Originals, Chen created graffiti on a white wall of eight by four metres. He held the paints in his hands, squeezed, and splashed them into the sky. The marks left on the wall became a breathtaking picture of water and mountains, in typical Chinese wash-and-ink style.
The campaign, United All Originals, pinpoints the most creative street artists in the country, and Chen is the type of artist the company is looking for. “I was a rebellious child,” he says. “I skateboarded, did graffiti and street dancing.”
In high school Chen painted graffiti under Dongping Bridge in his hometown, Foshan in Guangzhou. It took him four days to paint a colourful Chinese dragon nearly a kilometre long, visible to people walking on the bridge or along the river. No one knew its creator was a 19-year-old.
Chen continued his graffiti after being admitted to Raffles Design Institute in Singapore. One day he went to an exhibition at the National Museum of Singapore on the late Chinese wash-and-ink master Zhang Daqian. “It suddenly occurred to me. ‘Why can’t I combine graffiti and a Chinese way of drawing?’”
Chen was inspired by Zhang’s skill at “splashing inks”. The painting he remembers most was a landscape made of dots, curving lines and large scales of black ink in different shades.
“Later I became fascinated with wash-and-ink paintings by masters like Zhang Daqian and Wu Guanzhong. I tried to study their skills,” he says.
He often explores new ways to combine Western graffiti styles with traditional Chinese methods and elements. including ink painting, drum rhythms and a variety of cultural symbols.