Daydream
shijiazhuang
March 7 – May 24, 2026
Daydream
Artists: Dan Er, DONG lyo, Shen Wei, Wang Yanming, Xin Kuan, Yu Ruohan, Zhou Tianbai, Zhao Xuan
Exhibition: Daydream
Duration: March 7 – May 24, 2026
Xin Kuan: Gone, but the Traces Remain
Out of the Crowd, Coastal City, Castles in the Air—not a single person appears in Xin Kuan's paintings. Yet you always feel they have just left.
The abandoned man-made objects, the traces left in the wake of environmental change—they function like silent punctuation, compelling the entire scene to speak of absence. The artist calls this a "posthuman gaze": when humans disappear, objects come alive, forming new relationships with their surroundings—even entering into confrontation with them.
Standing before the paintings, you can't help but wonder: Did I leave them, or did they leave me?
Wang Yanming: We in the News
The Great Heist, Tiger Hunt, Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A B A—Wang Yanming's works are largely drawn from news imagery.
But what he paints is not the news itself. Using charcoal, acrylic, and oil, he pulls events that once felt distant into a peculiar theater of the everyday. The canvases are modest in scale, yet dense with implication. Each image functions like a pause button, inviting you to stop and wonder: Could it be that these things, seemingly unrelated to me, have already quietly entered my life?
"All pretty everyday stuff," he writes in his artist statement—just four words.
Shen Wei: Tug-of-War with the Seven Emotions
In her Seven Emotions Stone series, Shen Wei renders the fundamental human emotions—joy, anger, sorrow, fear, love, hatred, and desire—as monumental boulders.
Figures pull at them, lift them, carry them. Sometimes it is a wrestling match; sometimes, a collaboration. The artist poses a question: When we attempt to "sever the seven emotions and six desires" in the name of love, what exactly are we cutting away? Is it life force itself, or the part of ourselves that refuses to conform?
Asymmetrical Balance, Escape Route, The Shadow's Reminder—each painting circles the same inquiry: Could it be that the darkness we choose to ignore is where the truth truly resides?
lyo DONG : The Nameless on Silk
Casse-noix, Cicérone batelier, Sœur inconnue —Iyo DONG paints on silk, using water and ink.
The titles are French. The images are dreamlike. Those blurred figures, those weightless apparitions — they feel like someone you can no longer name, buried deep in memory; like a patch of light from a childhood afternoon; like the final scene of a dream, slipping away just as you wake.
Ethereal.
Dan Er: A Thousand Years Later, the Stamp Remains
Dan Er's Greetings No. 1–121 is the largest work in the exhibition—four panels, each measuring 146 × 364 cm.
Handmade paper, Japanese pigments, wooden stamps. Impressed again and again, layered over time. The motifs, drawn from folk traditions, become blurred, overlapping, and unfamiliar through repetition—yet stubbornly present. Like an ancient ritual. Like a coded message carried across a millennium.
You may not understand it. But you know it matters.
Zhao Xuan: Awaiting the Gaze
Zhao Xuan's entry in the checklist is left blank—save for a single self-portrait incised into paper with a knife.
Not an omission. It is you, standing before that wall, who must complete it.
Zhou Tianbai: Just Standing There, Telling a Little Joke
Understated. Unemotional.
He looks up slowly and tells you a small joke.
Yu Ruohan: Capturing Fragments to Prolong the Dream
On paper, she captures the instant a feeling takes hold—as if it had never faded. Only what has taken shape can truly be given form.
Daydream, Not Night Dream
The exhibition is called Daydream.
Daydreams are nothing like night dreams. Night dreams sneak in while you sleep, leaving you defenseless. Daydreams happen when you’re awake—if only you let yourself drift away for a moment.
Maybe it’s those three minutes spent staring out the window, completely lost in thought.
Maybe it’s the vivid scenes that play in your mind when a song suddenly hits.
Maybe it’s the few seconds in front of a painting, when the world slips away and you forget who you are.
This exhibition exists to give you those moments.
Guidelines for Entering the Dream
The dream is free.
No reservation needed.
No threshold to cross.
But the dream is fleeting—so fleeting, you might not be ready to wake when it’s over.
So, while you’re still here, while these few precious seconds are yours—
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