Ding Yi (b. 1962, Shanghai, China), is a leading figure in Chinese geometric abstraction who lives and works in Shanghai. Ding’s early education took place amidst China’s Cultural Revolution. His practice was developed in reaction to Socialist Realist propagandist imagery, called xuanchuanhua, which flooded the country’s visual landscape during his formative years, as well as by later studies in Chinese ink painting at Shanghai University, which he attended from 1986 to 1990. 

During this period, the artist created a system for constructing nonrepresentational works using solely the motif of a rudimentary cross—depicted alternately as x and +—which he developed into an ongoing series he named “Appearance of Crosses.” To construct the work in this series, Ding first maps out underlying compositions on his wood and paper supports before building up accumulations of crosses to realize these compositions using unmixed paints taken straight from the tube. The series is dictated by a strict set of rules intended to detach the resulting paintings from representation, as well as from meaning and emotion. Instead, he describes these paintings as representations of spirit.