Ming Wang’s solo exhibition, Through Lingering Window, curated by Ashley Ouderkirk at Fou Gallery, creates a meditative and healing enclave amidst the bustling streets of Union Square in New York. Located on the seventh floor of a Fifth Avenue building, the gallery becomes an intimate retreat where Wang’s oil paintings evoke a sense of stillness within the restless cityscape.
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Windows shape Mang’s exploration of perception and distance, delineating the boundary between interior and exterior, solitude and connection. What views do we glimpse when lingering through windows? With her sensitive yet restrained brushwork, Wang captures the subtle details of everyday urban life—delicate in-house plants, swirling outdoor foliage, the dimly shifting light. She invites viewers to experience the transience of fleeting moments and the fragility of natural elements, translating them into contemplative observations imbued with emotional depth.
The cool tones in Wang’s paintings convey an introspective melancholy, drawing viewers into the liminal space between presence and absence. Deep blues—reminiscent of Rebecca Solnit’s A Field Guide to Getting Lost—convey a sense of longing, distance, and the vastness of atmosphere. In the monochromatic Window Spider (2024), a delicate spider descends within the frame of a double-arched cloister window—a quiet yet powerful symbol of creation, suspended in an expanse of blue. Meanwhile, the shadowy figures in her work suggest a distant observer, quietly watching from afar, reinforcing themes of estrangement and connection.
In the gallery, a subtle dialogue unfolds between the artwork and the architecture. New Beginning (2024), displayed on the white wall to the right, is thoughtfully juxtaposed with Blue Window (2023) on the red brick wall to the left. In New Beginning, thick stone bricks frame a keyhole-shaped archway, echoing the red-brown brick wall beside it. Meanwhile, Blue Window presents a nocturnal scene through a four-panel window, as if opening a real window onto the industrial brick wall. This juxtaposition guides the viewer’s gaze to shift between reality and image—one moment drawn to the luminous cerulean sky on the right, the next to the twilight glow on the left.
The windows in Wang’s paintings are not merely physical boundaries but portals between external reality and the inner self, inviting viewers to linger—and, in that moment of contemplation, become part of the scene themselves. As I wandered through Wang’s exhibition, I was reminded of Bian Zhilin’s poem Fragment (1935):
“When you watch the scenery from the bridge,
The sightseer watches you from the balcony.
The bright moon adorns your window,
While you adorn another’s dream.”
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About the Writer: Eunice Yuyue Chen (Chongqing, China), is an independent curator and researcher based in New York. Her research focuses on migration and diaspora, body and space, critical urbanism and environmental injustice. Her curatorial practice have been shown at CAAN/Gallery 456 (2024), Rockella Space (2024), Level Art Gallery (2024), Accent Sisters (2024) and Pfizer Building (2023/2022). She has participated in curating Bergen Assembly (2022), LUXELAKES A4 Art Museum (2021), and Hangzhou Triennial of Fiber Art (2019).
Ming Wang: Through Lingering Window at Fou Gallery,
January 11–March 8, 2025, 89 Fifth Avenue, Suite 701, New York