1962年出生于河南郑州。1985年毕业于浙江美术学院（今中国美术学院）油画专业。后定居杭州直至2017年，先后工作于杭州丝绸工学院（今浙江理工大学）与中国美术学院。
耿建翌的职业生涯始于中国“'85新潮”——一个标志着艺术与艺术表达反思与创新的时代，以耿建翌的挚友——张培力为核心的杭州艺术家们在其中发挥了非常重要的作用。他们都渴望找到新的艺术表达方式来反映其周遭的巨变，及其所闻所见的日常生活。耿建翌的艺术一以贯之地保持着观察和提问——正如我们在《他是谁？》等作品中看到的那样。这些简单的问题，不需要明确的答案，是耿建翌用来帮助我们看到我们周围的生活，那些日常司空见惯而被熟视无睹的事。他的作品，给了我们一个崭新的视角，关于我们如何参与生活、如何与他人相处、如何做事。这在《做到正确的自己》（2005）和《抵消》（2007）中最为明显；也延伸到我们在日常生活中所消费之物，例如其作品《没用了》（2004）所强调的。该系列作品始于其1995年的项目《不是现实的选择》，他关注的是艺术家们创作中废弃材料时的选择，正如我们普通人平时在挑选家装地板时面临的一样。
21世纪初，耿建翌参与组织了许多展览，但他从未自称为策展人。他的主要兴趣是把艺术家们聚集在一起，探索一些特定的问题、想法或某种特殊的表现形式。这种做法也可以追溯到1986年他所参与的杭州“池社”、1994-95年“以……作为理由”系列活动，以及后来邀请学生和艺术家们一起参展的“没事了”和“出事了”等。这些项目的关键点在于耿建翌如何以合作者的身份与其他所有参与者平等相处。
2008年，耿建翌创建了“阿嚏阿嚏”工作组，2010年成立了想象力学实验室，更为广泛地开展了“月食”、“课堂”等实验艺术项目。与此同时，耿建翌与他的合作者们一起扩展了他对艺术和社会的探索，继续以基础材料进行实验工作。这种实践的深度在2015年的一系列作品中体现出来，他称其为“无题”；而从其于2016年在日本开启的系列纸质作品中亦能窥见一个全新思路的端倪。
耿建翌也是一位杰出的作家，极富语言表现力。他所述并非关于艺术理论，而是作为其艺术表现观念的个人表达。从20世纪80年代末到90年代初，他所发表的文章显示了他对自我实践相关主题的清晰思考。但值得注意的是，他也因一些个人需求而继续写作，他曾在MSN空间中连续发表的系列短篇故事，其语言与叙述极其文学却通俗简洁。它们诠释了耿建翌对世界的观察和他在艺术中探索的问题。（其中一些故事后来再次出现在2015年“小桥东面”的展览/图书项目中。）
耿建翌在后期将大量精力投入到中国美术学院的教学工作中。源于“艺术可以学，不可以教”的理念，其教学方法独特，一如其艺术风格。这一理念亦引导着他帮助学生去感悟自己的想法，并找到自己的艺术表达方式。
作为中国当代艺术杰出的先锋艺术家，耿建翌获得了2012年中国当代艺术奖的CCAA杰出成就奖。2016年获AAC艺术中国年度影响力奖“年度艺术家”表彰。2018年被中国美术学院追授“哲匠奖”。
Born in 1962 in Zhengzhou, Henan. In 1985, he graduated from Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now China Academy of Art), majoring in oil painting. He then settled in Hangzhou until 2017, working successively at Hangzhou Institute of Silk Technology (now Zhejiang University of Science and Technology) and China Academy of Art.
Geng Jianyi’s career began at the '85 New Wave, in an era marked new thinking about art and artistic expression that was unfolding across China, in which a number of artists in Hangzhou, especially those around Zhang Peili, played very important role. They were all keen to find new ways to express the enormous changes taking place around them, and in their own lives, through art that related to daily life as they saw and experienced it. Habits of looking observing and asking questions were practices that Geng Jianyi generally pursued throughout his career – as is exemplified in the title of a work like Who Is He?. Simple questions, which required no definitive answer, were a tool that Geng Jianyi used to help viewers see something of the life taking place around them; common aspects of daily life that fade into the background as they become habit, or that are no longer observed because society is habituated to them. Drawn into an artwork, these questions reorient the gaze, prompting new perspectives on how we engage with life, how we act in relation to others or, simply, how we do things. This is most obvious in Do Your Correct Self 2005, and Offset 2007, but also extends to an awareness of actions in daily life, and the choices people make. This he began first in 1995 with the project of specifically looking at what artists throw away (Needs of Negative Reality) to the choices that ordinary people make in choosing flooring materials for their home.
The early 2000's, Geng Jianyi was involved in organising a number of exhibitions, but he never saw himself as a curator. His primary interest was to bring artists together to explore a particular issue, idea or a particular form of expression. This practice also dates back to 1986 with his involvement in the Pond Society, Hangzhou, and to 1994-95 with the two projects done for “XX As A Reason”. Later projects like “Mei Shi” and “Chu Shi” invited students as well as artists to make the exhibition event together.
Similarly, in 2008, Geng Jianyi created "Sneeze" work group and, in 2010, ImageLab, which developed experimental art projects such as "lunar eclipse" and "classroom". An important aspect of these projects is how Geng Jianyi took the role of collaborator on equal footing with all other participants. At the same time Geng Jianyi expanded his exploration of art and society with other collaborators, he continued experimental work with materials. This aspect of his interest in revealed in a series of works from 2015 that he named “Untitled”; and in what is the beginnings of a new train of thought in series of paper works begun in Japan in 2016.
Beyond his variegated work with the visual and conceptual language of art, Geng Jianyi was also a great writer. Not in terms of art theory, but using text as a personal expression of his attitude towards artistic expression, and the problems within it that he identified. Articles published from the late 1980s to the early 1990s show his clear thinking about topics related to his own practice. He continued to write, mainly for private purposes in personal notebooks, and for an MSN account (early form of social media), which he used to publish short stories using a very literary yet simple easy approach to language and storytelling. These illustrate his observations of the world and issues that he explored in art. (Many of these subsequently reappeared in the exhibition project “East to the Bridge” 2015.)
In his later life, Geng Jianyi devoted a great deal of energy to his teaching role at China Academy of Fine Arts. His approach was a distinctive as his style of art, born of the idea that art can be learned but cannot be taught. This guided him in helping his students to understand their own ideas could find expression as art.
As an outstanding pioneering artist of Chinese contemporary art, artist Geng Jianyi was awarded the CCAA Outstanding Achievement Award at the 2012 China Contemporary Art Awards. In 2016, he was recognized by AAC Art China Annual Influence Award “Artist of the Year”.
