Exhibition
Installation View
Exhibition Video
Exhibition Trailer
《Void & Volume》
— An East-West Dialogue of Perception Chapter II
2026.8.15-10.18
Bluerider ART Shanghai·The Bund
Bluerider ART
Curatorial Statement
Bluerider ART Shanghai·The Bund is honored to announce, following the spring 2026 opening of “Pupil & Pulse”, the first chapter of “An East-West Dialogue of Perception” in Los Angeles, the second chapter, “Void & Volume”, will open in Shanghai·The Bund on August 15. From the measured space of Renaissance perspective to the East’s millennia-old philosophy of emptiness; from the presence of volume to the generative force of void — this exhibition brings together twelve contemporary artists from East and West to explore space, perception, and the many possibilities of existence, moving between what is void and what is real.
Chapter I, “Pupil & Pulse”, asked how we see—once something is seen, the next question follows: how does one settle what has been seen onto a flat plane? And the most essential part of a painting is often the part left empty—how to handle what is not painted. Emptiness, then, becomes the starting point of all composition.
The West’s starting point is presence. Since the Renaissance, perspective has treated space as a measurable vessel awaiting fullness; chiaroscuro sculpts volume with weight; the picture plane becomes a window opening onto three-dimensional reality. In this tradition, space is positive, meant to be occupied—its undertone a fear of the void, horror vacui. To exist is to be filled. The East’s starting point, by contrast, is void. Laozi wrote that “being and non-being give rise to each other,” that emptiness “never exhausted, yields more the more it moves.” Zhuangzi spoke of “the empty chamber that gives birth to light.” Blank space is not background, nor the leftover after the subject is fixed in place—it is the most alive, most vital part of the picture: cloud, water, breath left unspoken. Bada Shanren sets a single fish, a single bird, against a vast expanse of nothing. To command substance through void, to achieve more with less—the deepest confidence of Eastern painters lies precisely in their courage not to paint. The two views of space are, at root, two metaphysics: one grounds existence in being, the other grounds all things in non-being.
What truly elevates this difference into a “dialogue” is a twentieth-century encounter that ran in reverse. The West arrived at void from the opposite direction. Malevich’s “White on White,” Rothko’s color fields, the negative space reactivated within abstract painting—modern Western art, through the act of hollowing out, found itself standing where the East had stood all along. And so the drama of our own moment unfolds: the East moves from void toward being, the West from being into void, the two paths meeting midway. This is not a matter of influence in either direction, but of two civilizations independently arriving at each other through their separate reckonings with emptiness. The works in this chapter stand at that meeting point—some breathing through blank space, some structured by negative space, some caught in a running dialectic between fullness and emptiness, density and permeability—so that void and substance are no longer merely a matter of technique, but a contemporary inquiry into being and nothingness itself. The twelve artists, regardless of East or West, are arranged along a single spectrum measured by degrees of void and substance.
At one end of the axis lies volume and matter. Wolfgang Flad’s organic paintings, built from regenerated materials and double-layered glass filters, occupy real space—the most direct declaration of “substance.” Yang Yang’s white marble sculptures carry the gentleness of the noble character within the weight of stone, letting tenderness inhabit mass. Chingltu’s mineral pigments are ground from the artist’s own cultural origins into color itself—the most elemental grounding of materiality. Sun Yihan frames figures and animals within grid-like wooden structures, cutting through time and space, leaving gaps of voyeuristic possibility between fragmented images.
At the midpoint of the axis lies the border where substance and void are both true at once. Martina Ziegler’s “layered paintings” combine analog and digital deconstruction, so the image folds repeatedly between the real and the illusory. Bay Tang Jiaxin picks apart the fibers of paper with a needle, letting time surface through repetitive labor—within the material of paper itself, a latent space rises. Adrian Wald distorts the canvas with unconventional materials, challenging the viewer’s assumptions about a picture’s “authenticity” and “materiality,” unsettling the very act of viewing painting. Pi Kai divides reality from the virtual across the picture plane, his figures drifting between the two realms—void and substance are, for him, almost the subject itself.
At the far end of the axis, matter begins to dissolve. Eberhard Ross weaves a trembling field of energy from dense, repeated brushstrokes, until the picture itself seems to breathe. Zhang Meng’s oils bleed cloud and freedom, forms releasing their edges into haze. Michael Craik layers thin washes until matter recedes into light. Christiane Grimm transforms geometric imagery into flowing color through shifts of light and sightline. Here, void is no longer emptiness, but a lighter way of being.
From substance to void, the twelve artists’ works form a single continuous spectrum—and what is most compelling is that one need not identify which brushstroke came from East, which from West. Contemporary art today has moved past the point where void and substance mark a civilizational boundary; they are now a shared language among all who create. This is the final fruit of that twentieth-century encounter run in reverse. Void and substance, inner and outer—this is perception’s first spatialization: the heart moving toward emptiness. Having seen, our hearts learn to hold what cannot be seen—and those things that need not be painted, yet arrive first of all.
Participatipating artists:
Eberhard Ross
Martina Ziegler
Michael Craik
Wolfgang Flad
Adrian Wald
Christiane Grimm
Chingltu
Yang yang
Bay Tang Jiaxin
皮凱 Pikai
Zhang Meng
Sun Yihan
《Void & Volume》
— An East-West Dialogue of Perception Chapter II
Press Preview: August 14 (Fri) 2pm-5pm
Opening Reception: Saturday, August 15, 2026 3:00–6:00 pm (Opening Ceremony at 3:30 pm, open to public)
Exhibition Dates: August 15–October 18, 2026
Bluerider ART Shanghai · The Bund
No. 133 Sichuan Middle Rd., Huangpu Dist., Shanghai
Open: Tuesday-Sunday 9:30am-6:30pm
info.china@blueriderart.com
T: 021-63306166
Works
Artist
Eberhard Ross
（Germany, b. 1959)
Eberhard Ross (Germany, b. 1959) currently lives and works in Mülheim an der Ruhr and Frankfurt, Germany. He studied at Folkwang-University Of Arts Essen with László Lakner and Friedrich Gräsel. For decades, Ross has dedicated himself to painting and drawing, combining Zen Buddhist philosophy with minimalist aesthetics. His meditative working process responds to the order and rhythm found in nature. His works are held in numerous public and corporate collections, including Deji Art Museum (Nanjing, China), Royal Bank of Canada, Art Collection NRW (North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany), and Museum of Art Alte Post (Mülheim, Germany).
Martina Ziegler
(Germany, b. 1969)
Martina Ziegler (Germany, b. 1969) currently lives and works in Germany. She studied Liberal Arts at International University of Applied Sciences for Art and Design in Cologne, and later pursued Visual Communication at University of Applied Sciences, Düsseldorf. Ziegler is known for her distinctive concepts of "Crossover Painting" and "Metafoto," which merge analog painting with digital translation techniques to create a unique and recognizable artistic vocabulary. Her works have been exhibited in cities such as Berlin, Düsseldorf, and Essen. She is a member of the Association of Düsseldorf Women Artists e.V.
Michael Craik
(Scotland, b.1972)
Michael Craik was born in Edinburgh in 1972 and has worked as an artist in Scotland for over 25 years. He studied Fine Art at Gray’s School of Art in Aberdeen before completing an MA in European Fine Art in Barcelona. A recipient of several awards, Craik’s work has been widely exhibited internationally and is represented by galleries in Scotland, Germany, The Netherlands, Spain and the USA. Michael Craik lives and works in Fife, Scotland. His coastal studio is surrounded by an expanse of sky and the endlessly shifting colours of the sea as they vanish into the distant horizon of the Forth Estuary. The uninterrupted ebb and flow of these waters form a subconscious backdrop to Craik’s daily studio routine, a metronome to his unhurried and deliberate artistic practice.
Wolfgang Flad
(Germany, b. 1974)
Wolfgang Flad (Germany, b. 1974) graduated from the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart and currently lives and works in Berlin. Renowned for his distinctive sculptural language, Flad departs from the weight and monumentality traditionally associated with sculpture. Employing wood, metal, glass, and recycled materials, he creates sinuous, irregular forms that embody organic vitality and tension. His solo exhibition at Tampa Museum of Art，his works by permanent collected the Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Kunsthaus Zürich, Centraal Museum Utrecht.
Adrian Wald
(Germany, b.1986)
Adrian Wald (Germany, b.1986) was born in Bavaria, Germany, currently lives and works in Munich. He studied graphic painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich and the Ecole Mediterraneo des Arts in Marseille, France. In Wald's creative field, there is no clear boundary between "sculpture" and "painting", installation works that combine sculpture and painting are the main forms of creation. He deconstructs objects and embodies the concept of "breaking the way or order of viewing paintings" through his works. Wald has been selected to participate in the artist-in-residence program in Riedenburg, Germany many times, and has received grants from the Bavarian Ministry of Arts and Culture.
Christiane Grimm
(Germany, b. 1957)
Christiane Grimm (Germany, b. 1957) was born in Stuttgart, Germany, and graduated from the University of Stuttgart's architecture department, currently lives and works in Heidelberg. Christian Grimm focuses on the sensual effect conveyed by special materials like acrylic glass, emerges from the interplay between colours, composition, space, material, and lighting. Her work allows physical light to influence the specificity of the image, revealing three-dimensional gradients painted by light. Exhibited at the Museum Ritter and the Wilhelm Hack Museum in Germany and awarded the public's choice award, permanently collected by institutions such as the City Government of Heidelberg, Deutsche Bank, Das Kleine Museum and Kunsthalle Würth, as well as private institutions like PwC's Assurance Services.
Chingltu
（China, b.1985）
Chingltu (China, b. 1985) graduated with a Master of Fine Arts from the Art Academy of Inner Mongolia University and currently lives and works in Shanghai. His creative process is profoundly influenced by his childhood memories of the pastoral lands, with recurring themes of contrast and tension: the city and the grasslands, the natural and the artificial, passion and rationality. After the pandemic, Chingltu turned his focus to the nomadic legend of the “Three Stones,” exploring the essence and truth of contemporary life. His work draws from religious philosophy but ultimately reflects back on the earth we inhabit, contemplating urban civilization through the lens of nomadic traditions. He seeks to uncover the commonalities and conflicts between urban life and nomadic culture, as well as the balance between reality and imagination. His works have been exhibited in the National Art Museum of China, Shaanxi History Museum, Today Art Museum, and Xi’an Art Museum.
Yang Yang
(China, b.1988)
Yang Yang (China, b. 1988) holds a master’s degree from the Department of Sculpture at the Academy of Arts & Design, Tsinghua University, and currently lives and works in Shanghai. Throughout his long-standing sculptural practice, he has focused on the materiality of the body as object, with individual expression rendered into forms enveloped by their material. Drawing from traditional materials, Yang excavates a sculptural language uniquely his own, mastering each medium to present, through condensed forms, the body and spirit of the “everyman” in contemporary society—chronicling the emotional climate of our era from an individual standpoint.
Bay Tang Jiaxin
（China, b.1995）
Bay Tang Jiaxin (China, b. 1995) holds a Master of Arts degree from the Royal College of Art in the UK and currently lives and works in Changsha. Influenced by her background in printmaking, the qualities of paper have become central to her artistic language, allowing the material to convey her exploration of the blurred existence between space and time. In her Pierced Paper series, Tang uses a needle to lift the fibers of paper, creating an undulating surface through repetitive actions. These acts embody the passage of time, with the resulting texture and visual-tactile resonance reflecting her state of mind during the creative process and her inquiry into subspaces. Her work The Stone of Another Mountain has been collected by the Jiangxi Art Museum.
Pikai Pi Kai
（China, b.1995）
Pi Kai (China, b.1995) graduated with a master’s degree in printmaking from the Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts and currently lives and works in Xi’an, China. Drawing inspiration from video game visuals, he creates new worlds composed of game backgrounds, characters, and plants. The composition of lines in his paintings divides the real and virtual worlds, with characters oscillating between the two. At times, they escape into the virtual realm to experience a beauty unattainable in the real world. This attempt to detach reflects the concealed relationship in contemporary society, where people shift their mental focus between reality and fiction. His works have been exhibited at the Xi’an Art Museum and Shanghai Suning Art Museum, among others.
Zhang Meng
（China，b.1995）
Zhang Meng (China, b. 1995) holds a Ph.D. in Fine Arts from the Graduate School of the Central Academy of Fine Arts and currently lives and works in Beijing. Having studied traditional Chinese landscape painting since childhood, she has cultivated a profound emotional bond with the natural world. Even the smallest of natural textures—moss creeping along a wall, the surface of a stone—can give rise to myriad atmospheres in her eyes, sparking boundless imagination. Her recent series Realm · Scene moves beyond the mere exploration of abstract textures within natural landscapes, seeking instead to channel the most immediate emotional resonances drawn from people, objects, and moments encountered in everyday life. Her works have been exhibited at the Today Art Museum, the Grand Palais in Paris, and various venues in Italy, among others.
Sun Yihan
(China, b.2003)
Sun Yihan (China, b. 2003) is studying in the Department of Integrated Painting at the China Academy of Art. Currently lives and works in Hangzhou. He captures the traces left by time within architectural structures, framing the figures and animals he paints into wooden grids—like a timeline inscribed upon a wall. Within this vast expanse of time and space, he looks back; through the flow of distance, he observes, detaching himself from disturbance. The fragmentary extraction of human figures, juxtaposed with animals, is akin to an individual stepping outside the self to gaze upon the untamed freedom buried deep within the subconscious. Through associations of fractured imagery, peering through compressed channels, those underlying emotions seldom touched upon are uncovered and released. His works have been exhibited at the Qiantang Bay Art Museum.