Chinese contemporary art

August 19, 2026August 17, 2026, by Ming Chen

Transcendence at FOU Gallery

Group exhibition: Transcendence installation view, 2026. Photography by Jiaqi, courtesy of Fou Gallery

Transcendence, a group exhibition of sculptures and paintings, is curated by Helena Jin and on view at FOU Gallery from July 11 – September 5, 2026. The artists Tianshu Zhang (张天舒), Gloria Fan Duan (樊段晓春), and Tao Xian (陶显) explore the show’s theme of transcendence in vastly different formal ways. Despite Helena Jin’s scholarly background in researching Buddhist art history, the type of transcendence posed by the show is distinctly secular; while some of the artists reference East Asian tradition and symbolism, the “beyond” or spiritual is achieved through individual artistic approaches to color and form.

March 30, 2026March 29, 2026, by Michal Gavish

Zhang Huan: The Ash Paintings, at 125 Newbury Gallery

It has been over ten years since the last New York exhibition of the Chinese artist Zhang Huan, known for his edgy political performance pieces documented at the exhibition. What captured me on this visit was his ash paintings, which extended across the entire front hall of the gallery. It feels entirely appropriate that this social activist artist, who later turned to Buddhism, should exhibit these works in New York at such a tense moment. Ash, as a medium, touches on absolute destruction. It carries deep meaning in Buddhist practice, but these days it also pulls toward something harder to name: the daily accumulation of impure ash on the ground of cities being destroyed.

March 9, 2026March 7, 2026, by Deborah Wasserman

Qiu Xiaofei: The Theater of Wither and Thrive at Hauser & Wirth

At first glance, Qiu Xiaofei’s paintings appear weightless, washed in vaporous blues and fractured light. They hover between memory and dream, suspended in a luminous haze. But sustained looking alters the experience. The mist does not dissolve — it thickens. What seemed ethereal becomes anatomical. The viewer descends from the sky into the soil, and then further still into the ruptured systems, broken bodies, and unstable architectures that structure human existence. Beneath the atmospheric softness lies something closer to the bowels of what we call life: exposed nerves of paint, skeletal fragments, windows that stare back like watchful eyes. The work stages, narrates, and exposes modes of excavation.

February 17, 2026February 17, 2026, by Chunbum Park

FanFlus: a cross-cultural curatorial collective

Soft Instructions, Yshao Lin, Soomin Kang

Fanfan Yuxuan is a New York–based curator who has worked with galleries and art fairs in Paris and New York. Through this experience, she became attentive to how exhibitions shape the presentation and understanding of artists’ work, and to the gaps that can emerge between artistic intention and exhibition context. Fan develops projects that create platforms for artists, including those connected to graduate programs in the New York metropolitan area, and approaches curating as an evolving practice informed by collaboration and the logistical realities of exhibition-making.