The Opening Shot of “I see You, You see Me”

The group exhibition entitled “I see You, You see Me” curated by Zoe Chang was unveiled at Yuan Art Museum in mid-June, 2025. It showcases 11 groups of artworks by 7 artists from home and abroad, among which Klara Liden and Renata Lucas made their debut on the Chinese mainland.

As curator Zoe Chang put it at the opening, “The exhibition challenges our perception of artworks by breaking the conventional mindset through the most common daily life. We hope visitors are open-minded and they can appreciate each exhibit from a critical perspective.” 

Installation View of  “I see You, You see Me”

From some unique “observing” perspective of reality, artists make extensive use of readymade products from everyday life: a tap, floors, cardboard boxes, electric fans, and even a dishcloth... The “ingenuity” of these artists lies in that they try to deconstruct the seemingly “solid” stability on the surface of human social life: when familiar symbols are misplaced, coherent daily narratives are cut off by imagination, sensory experiences are reorganized in contradictions, and accustomed logic fails, visitors are forced to pop out of some fixed thinking inertia as if there was a “bug”, thus they have to pay attention to the fragility of reality.

Opening Shots of “I see You, You see Me”

“Idea Machine” brought by Ryan Gander is an interactive installation with a button. It’s about one meter high and it spits out paper strips quoted from 2,000 unrealized artistic ideas on the creative wall of Gander Studio including ‘Battle stickers’, ‘Post play composition rug for a wall’ and so on. Like a generous sharing of ideas, the artist gives his artistic ideas to others as gifts. While challenging the traditional modes of art creation with ease and humor, the work questions the common notion of originality and copyright and it contains his recognition of human finitude.

Ryan Gander, Idea machine, 2024, Tarnished brass, thermal receipt printer, button, 30 x 30 x 27.5 cm. Courtesy of private collection.Installation View of Idea machine at Yuan Art Museum, 2025.

Roman Ondak’s wall-mounted installation “Dripping Tap” features the industrial faucet that people use every day, and it is suspended by a metal wire that symbolizes “water droplets”, so that the “water droplets” and the tap form some visual cognitive paradox, breaking the common perception of tap. In another work, “Big Bang”, Roman Ondak recruited 21 children of various ages and encouraged them to paint their imagination of the origin of the universe. Interestingly, these children’s drawings still conform to the assumptions by most adults, for example, they were almost invariably in the form of circles or radials. In this way, the artist hopes that people can reflect on the deep and complex relationship between socialization and imagination and question what has influenced our perception of the unknown.

Roman Ondak, Dripping Tap, 2016, Water tap, sink bracket, ball chain, 141 x 13 x 39 cm. Courtesy the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin/Paris/Seoul.Installation View of Dripping Tap at Yuan Art Museum, 2025.

Roman Ondak, Big Bang, 2006, 21 drawings made by children, Plasticine ball, Dimensions of installation variable. Courtesy the artist and Esther Schipper, Berlin/Paris/Seoul.Installation View of Big Bang at Yuan Art Museum, 2025.

Brazilian artist Renata Lucas’s “Falha (Failure)”, which consists of a false floor formed by 112 planks, is a flexible, modular, freely assembled installation in which each unit consists of three or more planks hinged together and equipped with metal handles. Therefore, visitors can move the wooden panels in the museum according to their own ideas, forming different spatial configurations. “Transfigura”, was created by the artist during the pandemic, and the main body is a hanging dishcloth with screen-printed sans-serif words, with related text painted on the adjacent wall. When viewed from both sides, the folds of the dishcloth partially obscure the printed text. If viewed from the front, the letters join together to form the Portuguese word “transhgura”, suggesting a definite material or conceptual shift. Here, Lucas tries to show the tension between form and meaning.

Renata Lucas, Falha (Failure), 2003-2025, plywood, hinges, handles, Site-specific dimensions. © Renata Lucas. courtesy the artist and neugerriemschneider, Berlin.

Renata Lucas, Transfigura, 2020, silkscreen on dishtowel, paint, metal hook, 54 x 41 x 5cm. © Renata Lucas. photo by Jens Ziehe, Berlin. courtesy the artist and neugerriemschneider, Berlin.

Swedish artist Klara Liden explores the boundaries between the physical and the psychological in the public and private spaces that we inhabit by introducing discarded products from urban environments into usable products in museums. For example, “Grounding” takes the psychological concept as the title, playfully interpreting the process that the artist fell and got up again, choreographing an absurd “drift”, where the contradictions that need to be suspended and must move forward are concretized.

Klara Liden, Grounding, 2018[Still], HD video, Duration:5 min 53 sec. © Klara Liden. Courtesy the Artist and Sadie Coles HQ, London.

“Untitled (Cookies)”, a work composed of compressed cardboard boxes and a simple bench, conveys the “malfunction” in the city and the loneliness it brings. Klara Liden draws materials directly from the urban environment and takes the experience of individual survival in a group society as the motif to construct an alternative world. “Altocumulus” transforms a plastic jug into a lamp, capturing the openness and latent beauty of imperfection in a minimalist aesthetic. The chandeliers and sconces made from recycled plastic bins are being used in European restaurants and hotels, and the way that they were created is “just the right thing to do and cleverly advanced”, which also shows that people are trying to think beyond the set pattern of social conventions and convenience.

Klara Liden, Untitled (Cookies), 2024, plywood, cardboard, polypropylene banding, 98.5 x 207 x 84 cm. © Klara Liden. Courtesy the Artist and Sadie Coles HQ, London. Photo: Arthur Gray

Installation View of Grounding and Untitled (Cookies) at Yuan Art Museum, 2025.

Klara Liden, Altocumulus, 2020, plastic tank, light bulb, wire, 155x110x70cm. © Klara Liden. Courtesy the Artist and Sadie Coles HQ, London. Photo: Robert Glowacki

Based on 103 pieces of construction waste from abandoned construction sites in southern Fujian, He Chi selected 100 of them to form the installation “Hunger”. He deliberately gave up lighting his works and pursued a more primitive way of presenting them. The shapes of natural pottery waste that He Chi applied resemble steamed buns. The artist corresponds these objects to abstract hunger, and further put forward an abstract and poetic understanding of hunger with “stones”: “Hunger is a hard substance, hunger is a dirty color”.

He Chi, Hunger, 2022, Pottery, 15 x 15 x 9 cm x 100，Dimensions of installation variable. Courtesy of the artist. Exhibition View at Yuan Art Museum, 2025.

The cool breeze brought by the electric fan in “Enjoying the Cool”, is described by the artist Lai Chih-Sheng as “enjoying the cool is a mosquito and bathing the wind.” “Enjoying the Cool” is composed of three walls, with a total of 27 wall fans. The curved shape of the space is used to create a sense of air flow and at the same time open up a breathable space, and the corner restores the signs of someone leaving temporarily, with the jacket hung on the railing in front of the window and canned tea left on the ground. He cleverly shows the pun of the coolness, that is, the double meaning of laziness and rest. There is an illusory mosquito at the scene, which fluctuates slightly as the viewer adjusts the wind direction. The artist’s attention to the small details of life brings a poetic post-conceptual artistic tendency.

Lai Chih-Sheng, Enjoying the Cool, 2025, Installation, Dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist and Kiang Malingue. Exhibition View at Yuan Art Museum, 2025.

Hu Qingtai’s work “untitled” is a partial presentation of his work that has lasted for 11 years. The work is divided into two parts, left and right, arranged on two opposite walls. The outer contour figure adopts a stepped composition, splitting the content of the discourse he wants to express into multiple parts of modern Chinese strokes, which are distributed on post-it notes in each part, and visitors can piece them together and interpret them by themselves with an open-ended ending. This is a fresh experiment on interactive art, offering viewers different possibilities for participation.

Hu Qingtai, untitled, 2014-present, Drawing with a pen on a note、ballpoint pen, Dimensions variable. Courtesy of the artist. Exhibition View at Yuan Art Museum, 2025.

It is reported that the exhibition remains on view until October 12, 2025.

Text (CN) edited by Liu Xinyao, (EN) edited by Sue/CAFA ART INFO

Image Courtesy of Yuan Art Museum.

About the Exhibition

I see You, You see Me

Curator: Zoe Chang

Artists: Ryan Gander、He Chi、Hu Qingtai、Klara Liden、Renata Lucas、Lai Chih-Sheng、Roman Onda

Dates: 2025.6.14–10.12

Opening Reception: 4–7PM, 2025.6.13