Wang Jinsong is a contemporary Chinese artist living and working in Beijing, born in 1963 in Heilongjiang Province (with some sources citing Harbin). He graduated from the Chinese Painting Department of Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now China Academy of Art) in 1987, trained in traditional ink painting, and subsequently expanded his practice into oil painting, photography and video.

Wang was one of the key figures in China’s early 1990s avant‑garde movement, and is known as one of the first artists associated with the so‑called “Cynical Realism” style.

His early oil paintings offered sharp, witty critiques of Chinese social reality; later, he turned to photography and video to examine the effects of government policy and the social consequences of China’s rapid urbanization—such as the mass movement of people and large‑scale demolition. Among his major photographic series are Standard Family (1996) and One Hundred Signs of the Demolition (1998), which use repeated juxtapositions (notably the Chinese character “拆” for “demolish”) to record urban change in a cool,

In recent years, Wang has revisited traditional ink painting, moving fluidly between media to enact a dialogue between classical Chinese art and contemporary visual language. His works have been exhibited in major institutions globally, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), Ludwig Museum in Cologne, the International Centre of Photography (ICP) in New York, and the Guangdong Museum of Art.