/Exhibition/
Between the Breath of Objects
Role: Curator
Artists: Kyung Kim, Luping Wang, Silvia Muleo, Xuemeng Li, Ziyi Zhang
Time: 2026/5/6-2026/5/12
Address: Nguyen Wahed, 504 E 12th St, 10009 New York
In contemporary conditions shaped by technological mediation and ecological awareness, the boundary between the human and the material has become increasingly porous. Objects no longer remain external to experience; they circulate through systems of touch, image, sound, and data, accumulating traces of use, memory, and affect. Within this expanded field, the exhibition asks: when objects enter into relation with human breath, understood as rhythm, presence, and duration, how might the distinction between life and matter be rethought?
Between the Breath of Objects approaches objects not as fixed entities but as relational formations shaped through interaction. Drawing on the idea of “the thing” as a gathering of forces, the exhibition frames each work within an unfolding ecology. Breath functions as both metaphor and medium, a temporal condition through which bodies, materials, and environments become entangled. What emerges is not representation, but a field of co-presence where objects seem to expand, contract, and resonate within space.
Across installation, painting, moving image, and sound, the participating artists articulate distinct modes of relation. Ziyi Zhang materializes the cognitive gap between screens and physical reality. Treating the digital as a tangible medium, she ‘uploads’ everyday objects into virtual space and extrudes them back into topographical paintings via robotic and painterly processes. Her work acts as a physical glitch, giving structural weight to the flattened logic of the screen. Silvia Muleo works with light, hardware, and screen-based perception to reveal digital space as both illumination and interruption, where physical and virtual realities overlap and interfere. Xuemeng Li approaches the interface as a permeable threshold, exploring how identity is constructed and dispersed across mediated systems. Kyung Kim’s abstract landscapes extend the exhibition’s elemental dimension, offering painting as an atmospheric field shaped by rhythm, seasonality, and perception. Luping Wang’s practice reconfigures ephemerality as duration, translating transient forms into wearable structures where time lingers on the body rather than passes.
These works move beyond objects as fixed forms, proposing a continuum where matter, perception, and time unfold through relation. Between the Breath of Objects invites viewers into a field of shared becoming, shaped by proximity, resonance, and transformation.
