Chen Yingjie (Hua Tunan) Transforms a Shanghai Staircase into a 30-Metre Live Painting

On 26 September, Chinese contemporary artist Chen Yingjie, also known as Hua Tunan, transformed the monumental staircase of Taikoo Li Qiantan in Shanghai into a vast live painting. Titled 《天满音色》, the work unfolded across a 30-metre-long canvas laid over the undulating steps of Central Park, bringing Chinese landscape traditions, graffiti, colour and improvised music together in a four-and-a-half-hour public performance. 

Hua Tunan, 《天满音色》, Taikoo Li Qiantan, Shanghai, 2024. Image credit Chen Yingjie / Hua Tunan.

A 30-Metre Canvas Across Shanghai

Created for Taikoo Li Qiantan’s third anniversary, the work used the architecture itself as part of the composition. A canvas measuring approximately 30 metres by 3.2 metres was rolled across the landmark staircase, its surface rising and falling with the structure beneath it like a river moving through the building. 

As Chen Yingjie worked around the enormous surface with spray equipment and mixed media, musician 狮子侠 created an improvised soundtrack alongside him. Colour gradually travelled across the steps in sweeping layers, allowing painting, architecture and sound to develop together in real time. 

Hua Tunan, 《天满音色》, Taikoo Li Qiantan, Shanghai, 2024. Image credit Chen Yingjie / Hua Tunan.

Chinese Landscape Painting Meets Graffiti

Chen Yingjie’s practice has long occupied the space between traditional Chinese ink painting and contemporary street art, and 《天满音色》 pushes that dialogue into a particularly physical form.

Inspired by natural light, the sun, moon and stars, Chen Yingjie approached the vast surface through the language of Chinese freehand landscape painting while introducing the speed, scale and physical energy of graffiti. Broad movements and concentrated bursts of colour gradually formed a landscape that felt less like a fixed view of nature than an expression of its underlying force. 

The staircase amplified that sensation. Seen from above, the painted canvas appeared to flow between the surrounding architecture, echoing the development’s own relationship between water, stone and landscape. 

Hua Tunan, 《天满音色》, Taikoo Li Qiantan, Shanghai, 2024. Image credit Chen Yingjie / Hua Tunan.

Painting as Performance

For Chen Yingjie, the work was as much about the act of painting as the finished image. The four-and-a-half-hour process exposed everything normally hidden inside the studio: decisions, accidents, changes of direction and the physical effort required to control paint across such an enormous surface. Hua later compared this form of live creation to sport, describing the need to respond instinctively to weather, sound, architecture and the unexpected. 

That openness gives 《天满音色》 another dimension. The audience did not simply encounter a completed artwork; they watched the landscape emerge through movement, rhythm and colour.

Following the performance, the completed work was displayed inside Taikoo Li Qiantan, allowing the temporary action on the staircase to continue as a finished painting. 

Hua Tunan, 《天满音色》, Taikoo Li Qiantan, Shanghai, 2024. Image credit Chen Yingjie / Hua Tunan.

From Ink Painting to Urban Abstraction

《天满音色》 represents an important continuation of Chen Yingjie’s evolving practice. The animals that established his international reputation remain rooted in the force and movement of nature, but his later work has increasingly allowed landscape, light and energy themselves to become the subject.

The Shanghai performance brings those ideas together at architectural scale: traditional Chinese painting without nostalgia, graffiti without conventional lettering, and abstraction grounded in the physical experience of the natural world.

For an artist whose work has always depended on the tension between precision and controlled chaos, a 30-metre canvas unfolding across a staircase feels like a natural progression.

Hua Tunan, 《天满音色》, Taikoo Li Qiantan, Shanghai, 2024. Image credit Chen Yingjie / Hua Tunan.

Discover More Chen Yingjie / Hua Tunan

Explore Chen Yingjie, also known as Hua Tunan’s wider practice in GraffitiStreet’s Street Artist in the Spotlight: Hua Tunan, tracing his development from traditional Chinese painting and animal imagery to monumental murals and abstraction.

You can also revisit Gravity XLI, his earlier Shanghai mural in which Chinese landscape traditions, architecture and the changing shadows of surrounding trees became part of the work.

GraffitiStreet has worked with Chen Yingjie since 2016, from Underground and exclusive print collaborations to original works presented at our Chichester gallery.

Explore Chen Yingjie / Hua Tunan at GraffitiStreet or contact GraffitiStreet for acquisitions, sourcing, mural enquiries and private viewings.