Wu Wei, a collector born in the 1990s, is the founder and designer of a fashion brand. He began collecting in 2017 and, over the past eight years, has acquired sixty-five works, including pieces by artists from three generations in China—Zhang Peili, Geng Jianyi, Zhang Ding, Liu Guoqiang, Ding Shiwei, Li Ming, Zhou Yilun, and Yan Bing, among others. Internationally, he has tended toward younger artists roughly his own age, such as Issy Wood and Rodrigo Hernández.

Wu Wei’s new home. Wu Wei describes his story as something like leveling up through a series of monsters: he grew up in the countryside of Hubei, in a family in which two generations had worked the land. Because he loved to draw, he was admitted to the Hubei Academy of Fine Arts. During his senior year, he started a business from scratch. At one point, his brand had a shop beside the Wukang Building, in one of Shanghai’s busiest areas.

“When I was young, art meant hope to me. As I grew older, art came to mean the pursuit of self-awareness,” Wu Wei says. Three years ago, he picked up a brush again. By this year, he had decided to stage an exhibition of his own—“because I wanted to experience the identity of an artist.” In March, we visited Wu Wei’s new home in Hangzhou, from which faint mountain ridges can be seen in the distance, and spoke with him about collecting and the life he had led. What follows is his account: Wu Wei at home. I moved into this space in March. I’ve displayed around twenty works here—paintings, video installations, and sculptures.

I’ve brought together artists from three generations, in China and abroad. I moved from Wuhan to Hangzhou because I love the environment here. I had always hoped to own a house by the river, with a view of the mountains around West Lake. The first time I saw Hangzhou’s landscape, I immediately understood why the ancient painters depicted mountains and water as they did—with areas of solid and void, heavy ink and diluted ink. At the entrance, the sculpture is Wang Qiang’s Building No. 3; on the right is Shi Jiayun’s painting Fence. Some works in my collection are better suited to a place by the window, where sunlight can reach them.

Others belong in a quiet corner. I curated the collection in my home according to the form and expressive content of each work. The entrance hall features a work by the artist Wang Qiang. There are windows on both sides of the house, so placing this sculpture along the passageway makes the space feel transparent, almost as if it follows the principles of feng shui. And having a building inside the house gives me a reassuring feeling as soon as I walk in. Issy Wood, carrie chewa gum at opera, 2020, in the center of the living room. The theme of the living room is “portraits”: there are eight pairs of eyes.

At the very center of the living room is a work by the now-prominent artist of the 1990s, Issy Wood. It depicts a still from the television series Sex and the City: the female protagonist is holding an especially small telescope, looking toward the stage of an opera house, chewing gum. Wood’s parents are doctors, and she herself had an eating disorder as a child, so she has made many works related to the mouth. The style is both highly retro and distinctly Y2K.

I once came across a phrase that seemed fairly accurate in describing her: “medieval millennial.” She also sings and makes music, much as she paints. I’ve always felt that the artist herself resembles an especially “abstract,” mischievous friend—someone who sends you funny, bizarre anecdotes and emojis. Zhang Peili, Wanted No. 1. This corner of the living room includes works by Zhang Peili, Geng Jianyi, and Ding Shiwei. Zhang Peili and Geng Jianyi were both central figures in the ’85 New Wave Art Movement.

Mr. Zhang is known as the “father of Chinese video art.” From what I know of him, he dislikes the label intensely. For an artist, I think, refusing to be defined by a label is a matter of principle. His earlier works include a series of portraits—missing children, images of fugitives, friends around him—that emphasize art’s intervention in reality and point directly to social surveillance and the circulation of private information. They involve both individual and collective reflection. Geng Jianyi, It Must Be Him. Geng Jianyi’s representative work It Must Be Him collects the original documents containing identity information gathered from his friends and enlarges them. It is an exploration of personal identity.

There are eleven pairs in all; because of the way the work is displayed, I hung only this pair. Ding Shiwei, The Trial. Ding Shiwei’s “corner” is the only video installation in the house. The work is The Trial: a pair of eyes belonging to Sam Altman, founder of OpenAI and “father of ChatGPT,” shedding tears as a blood-red apocalypse approaches. I placed it in this recessed space, which resembles a small room—almost a confessional. The work reveals the moral and ethical judgments and doubts that confront technology leaders as they pursue development, as well as the possibility of self-redemption.

Zhang Ding, High-Speed Form #5, 2019. Rodrigo Hernández, A Lyreform Organ (O lotus-eyed one...), 2024. Hanging upside down from the ceiling is a work by the Mexican artist Rodrigo Hernández, at once eerie and mysterious.

The reason it is displayed this way is that bats naturally hang upside down in caves. There’s another point, too: Chinese people generally consider bats auspicious, so it means “good fortune has arrived,” you know? Yan Bing, Horizontal Bone, 2021, in the kitchen. In the kitchen, I displayed a work related to food. The artist Yan Bing is from Gansu. The bone he depicts resembles the bone of a cow or sheep, and it is closely connected to the land of his hometown and to his experience of growing up there.

The coffee table is Duan Yifan’s 20-Green; above it is Wang Qiang’s sculpture Retractable Hose. The coffee table is an urushi work by the artist Duan Yifan. The sculpture displayed on top is by Wang Qiang; its side is made of urushi and was completed with assistance from Duan Yifan. The two artists are also connected in real life, so the works have a particularly good energy when placed together. The sofa in the living room beside Duan Yifan’s urushi work. This chair is a daybed by Charlotte Perriand. I added a cushion and turned it into a sofa. Beside it is another small urushi work by Duan Yifan. It has a strong sense of Zen and fits the setting closely.

Guest bedroom, with Yu Feier’s The Wall on the floor. Liu Guoqiang, Folded #20200506, in the bedroom. Li Ming, Nothing Happened Today No. 2, Still, by the bedroom door. In terms of spatial design, I enlarged the living room, removed the study, and made the bedroom as small as possible. It gives me a greater sense of security. Almost everything hanging in my bedroom is abstract. It doesn’t make my thoughts too concrete, so I can fall asleep more quickly. At the door there is a painting called Nothing Happened Today—a kind of suggestion I make to myself.

Guo Xi, Information—Stone, Sphere, Straight Line, on the bedroom’s bay window. The plants in the house. I bought many plants for the house, large and small, and I like rearranging them, moving them from place to place. There isn’t much hanging on the walls now, because I don’t want the place to feel like a museum the moment I walk in. After all, I still have to live here. I want it to feel comfortable, unhurried, and breathable. Ding Shiwei’s work for Wu Wei’s brand store, Neon Spiral, 2020. Wu Wei (right) and Ding Shiwei (left) at the site of a collecting exhibition. The first time I seriously acquired a work by a contemporary artist was in 2017. It was by Ding Shiwei. After that, I fell into the “pit” of collecting. I keep records of every acquisition, so I know exactly that I now have sixty-five works.

I first got to know Ding Shiwei. He introduced me to Liu Guoqiang, then to Zhang Ding and Mr. Zhang Peili; only later did I hear the story of Geng Jianyi, and an entire lineage began to take shape. Wu Wei speaks with Ding Shiwei in the artist’s studio. I also visited Ding Shiwei’s studio. He walked me through his entire working process, and I realized that the state of a truly professional artist could feel very distant. At the same time, I felt enormous admiration, because being a professional artist had once been my dream.

This may be a somewhat heavy subject. My family was made up of very ordinary farmers. My parents worked the land, and so did my grandparents. During the Spring Festival of 2000, Wu Wei (center) and his three cousins paid New Year respects to their grandfather and asked for red envelopes. In 2000, Wu Wei (center), his three cousins, and his aunt stood on the road outside their home. My grandfather had a strong instinct for business and ran a small shop in the village. When I was around third grade, I began practicing calligraphy in front of the shop, copying photographs from history books. I deliberately wrote outside so other people could see me.

Many villagers came to buy things or make phone calls, and they would say, “Wow, how are you so good at drawing? You’re a little artist.” These early explorations related to art gave me a great deal of vanity. They also gave me hope—the feeling that perhaps art could make me better. Wu Wei as a student at the Hubei Academy of Fine Arts (first row, second from left). Wu Wei in front of the construction hoarding for his brand’s Hangzhou store. I studied at the Hubei Academy of Fine Arts in Wuhan. At the time, I chose design because I thought it would make it easier to find a job after graduation.

I started my business in the first semester of my senior year. Taobao was already extremely popular, so in a sense we caught the wave of the times. We listed some handmade objects from our third-year course projects on Taobao, and they unexpectedly became very popular. So we began building a brand almost by default. You could say I have never had a day job. Wu Wei looks at the latest lookbook for his brand. I think getting to know this group of conceptual artists working with video installations influenced me in this way: I saw how they take an extremely subtle point and enlarge it into a concept, an idea.

Now, when I design clothes, I think of them as prints. If a garment sells one thousand copies, it is one thousand prints. A print hangs on a wall; clothes are worn on the body. Wu Wei gives Zhang Peili a tour at the opening of his solo exhibition, The Face. I began studying design in my second year of college and stopped drawing. It wasn’t until 2022 that I began drawing again—an eleven-year gap. One reason I returned to drawing was that, during that difficult period, business had become extremely hard. Another was that I encountered the Italian artist Domenico Gnoli. His work offered a new way of seeing, and it moved me deeply.

Wu Wei’s solo exhibition The Face at B1ock Gallery, Hangzhou. The theme of this exhibition is THE FACE. I presented highly representational paintings that show and explore the complex relationships and symbolic meanings among clothing, identity, and the face. The works are not merely depictions of appearances; they also excavate the stories behind them and reflect on identity and self-awareness. Yet this is an exhibition with almost no portraits. Once the human face is no longer the focus, clothing becomes an important clue to the relationship between the individual self and social roles.

At the exhibition, visitors can see Kim Kardashian, Cardi B, members of the royal family such as Catherine, Princess of Wales, and Queen Camilla; the American rapper Justin Biber; and the supermodel Winnie Harlow. A detail of Winnie Harlow’s body painted by Wu Wei. Winnie Harlow has not tried excessively to conceal her vitiligo. Instead, she has shown it with confidence.

In the end, the illness—or what might be called a genetic defect—became her “weapon,” helping her achieve professional success and a very fulfilling life. Wu Wei’s solo exhibition The Face at B1ock Gallery, Hangzhou. Many people ask me, “Why did you put on this exhibition? How did you feel afterward?” I wanted to experience the identity of an artist from beginning to end. The opening, the tours, even the dinner and the sales were all new experiences. The result was beside the point; the experience itself was fulfilling.

Wu Wei rearranges plants at home. I especially love Hangzhou’s environment, and in recent years I feel that its art scene has grown stronger. On the one hand, many new galleries and museums have opened. On the other, a large number of art professionals graduate from the China Academy of Art every year, and, gradually, they settle here. Another reason is that I think Hangzhou’s artists are very close-knit. Zhou Yilun, He Xun, Ye Qing, and Cheng Ran, for example, are all in one building—they rented the entire building.

They don’t even lock the doors. You go over to someone’s place, drop in, play cards, have some tea; it has become a community. Wu Wei arranges Liu Guoqiang’s installation The Order of Curves at home. Although I enjoy visiting artists’ studios and becoming friends with them, I think artists and collectors should still maintain a certain distance. The relationship should be “ambiguous”—at once distant and close, mutually attracted. Artists need to preserve some mystery and independence in their work.

At this stage of my life, I’m living according to my own view of things, and within my own life.