Cui Jie smashes a glass ceiling with paintings of Asia’s explosive urban growth
2 min read · 26 Jun 2023
Cui Jie, “New Model Village”. Copyright the artist. Courtesy of Focal Point Gallery, Essex. Photos by Anna Lukala.
Cui Jie is on the HENI News radar as the Chinese painter's sci-fi canvases inspired by Asia’s booming cities are in demand among collectors.
Cui Jie's HENI Score—a unique artist sentiment—has seen a surge of 166% after a string of strong auction results. An artist’s HENI score amalgamates data such as auction sales, NFT sales, news and social media mentions, gallery shows and museum exhibitions.
Market
Sales of Cui’s works have totaled an impressive $643,200 over the past two years at auction. Notable recent results include Kunming Long-distance Telecom Hub Building (2017), which sold for $152,800 at Christie's in May 2023, more than twice the upper estimate.
In 2021, Ground Invading Figure #32 (2015) sold for $45,400 at Sotheby's Hong Kong, five and a half times its high estimate.
The artist’s works have been offered for price points from $5,000 for works on paper, sculptural works created by 3D printing from $17,500, and paintings up to $140,000 over the past two years.
Cui Jie, Taipei Biennial 2020. Copyright the artist. Courtesy Taipei Fine Arts Museum
Shows
Cui is represented by Pilar Corrias, which organised a solo show of her work in 2019 in London. She is also represented by Antenna Space, Shanghai. In the past she worked with the now closed Metro Pictures, New York, and Leo Xu, Shanghai.
Her works have been presented at leading art fairs, including editions of Frieze and Art Basel.
In 2022, the Chinese artist’s first solo museum show in the UK, “New Model Village”, was organised by Focal Point Gallery, Southend, in the south of England.
In 2020, Cui took part in the Taipei Biennial, where she presented five of her signature architectural paintings.
Profile
Born in Shanghai in 1983, where she is based, Cui is one of the few younger, female Chinese artists to make their mark internationally. Her citiscapes mix photo-realism and fantasy as she riffs off Modernist landmarks amid Asia’s explosive urban growth.
Cui told Artspace: “In China, one can see many different ‘appropriation’ styles—Russian, the Bauhaus, etc.—but I’m mostly interested in the influence of Japanese Metabolism on Asian modern architecture.”
To get a deeper understanding of Cui Jie’s career visit her HENI Dashboard; a unique graphical data tool illustrating an artist’s auction sales, shows, profiles, mentions and their HENI Score. You can search for any one of the 100,000 Artist Dashboards to quickly appreciate their trajectory as well as sharing via email, text and WhatsApp.