1964年生于北京，1988年毕业于中央美术学院，现工作和生活于北京。
王友身的艺术其特色来源于对公共媒体施加给我们的思想、情感和行为的影响的关注。就比如，一种包容和抵斥的手法，如果从来没有明确规定过，那么就由价值判断观来决定。在他以照片作为载体的图像里，王友身使用经过筛选的现成图片和私人照片，作为对图像多样的功能和价值进行深入研究探索的基础，包括它们内容的真实，和使用的方式。作为一名报纸编辑，王友身特别关注印刷图像的力量。这个很明显地反映在他的作“报纸”（1993）中。以报纸作为原材料，用来覆盖了所有的墙面，并直接印刷在织物上作成衣服。类似的作品“报纸广告”（1993）里，他用报纸覆盖了部分长城。把这些印刷媒介置入完全不同的环境里再使用，王友身破坏和质疑着它们的原始意义。
在一个被命名为“清洗”（2003）的单色照片系列里，他的出发点来自于两张原始照片，这两张照片真实纪录了二战时期日本军队活埋几万中国人。其中一张照片描述的是一些来自葬场残骸被冲走的场景。利用清洗（即去成像）的标志性手法，王友身考虑着关于清洗的问题－可以被理解为一种宣泄的形式，或是一种遗忘的形式，一次对记忆的清洁。王友身的视觉试验表明了他的意图，想发展出一种艺术沟通的模式，可以识别任何一种媒介所必须的和琐碎的天性。因此，他拒绝接受把作品减至成为单调一致的叙事的概念。
Born in 1964 in Beijing, graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 1988, now works and resides in Beijing.
Wang Youshen's art is characterized by a focus on the influence mass media exerts on our thoughts, emotions, and actions. For example, the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion, which are determined by value judgments if never explicitly stated. In his photograph-based images, Wang Youshen uses selected press images alongside private photos as the basis of his investigation into the various functions and values of images as well as their truth content and modes of employment. Having worked as a magazine editor, Wang Youshen is particularly concerned about the power of print imagery. This is directly reflected in his work Newspaper (1993), where he uses newspaper as raw material, both covering entire walls and printing them directly onto fabric for clothing. In a similar project called Newspaper Advertising (1993), he covered part of the Great Wall with newspaper. By reusing the printed media in an entirely new context, Wang Youshen subverts and questions its original meaning.
In the monochromatic series of photographic work entitled Washing (2003), his focal points are two original photographs documenting tens of thousands of Chinese buried alive by Japanese troops during the Second World War. One of the pictures depicts a scene where some remains from the burial site have been washed off. Wang Youshen uses the symbolic act of washing to reflect upon the question of washing that can be understood both as a form of catharsis and as a form of amnesia; a cleansing of memory. Wang Youshen's visual experiments mirror his intent to develop a form of artistic communication that recognizes the necessarily fragmentary nature of any media. He therefore rejects the notion of reducing the work to a single coherent narrative.
