Bluerider ART Shanghai · The Bund presents Chapter II: “Void & Volume” the second chapter of “An East-West Dialogue of Perception”
Following the Spring 2026 opening of Chapter I, “Pupil & Pulse” in Los Angeles, the series continues in Shanghai · The Bund with Chapter II, “Void & Volume”.
If Chapter I asked how we see, Chapter II asks what happens next: once something is seen, how do we anchor it on a flat surface? And in painting, the most essential part is often what is left unpainted how we treat what is not painted. In that sense, emptiness is where all composition begins.
From the measurable space of Renaissance perspective to the Eastern philosophy of emptiness cultivated over millennia; from the presence of volume to the creative power of void this exhibition brings together twelve contemporary artists from East and West to explore space, perception, and the possibilities of existence, between the void and the real.
Two Starting Points
The West begins with presence. Since the Renaissance, perspective has understood space as a measurable container waiting to be filled; chiaroscuro models volume and gives it weight; the picture plane becomes a window onto a three-dimensional reality. In this tradition, space is positive, intended to be occupied with an undertone of horror vacui, a fear of the void. To exist is to be filled.
The East begins with void. As Laozi wrote, being and non-being generate each other, and emptiness, “never exhausted, becomes fuller the more it moves.” Zhuangzi wrote of “the empty chamber that gives birth to white light.” Here, blank space is not a background, nor what remains after the subject is placed it is the most alive and vital part of the painting: a cloud, water, an unspoken breath. Bada Shanren can place a single fish or a single bird in a vast expanse of nothing. To command substance through void, to achieve more with less the deepest confidence of Eastern painters lies in their courage not to paint. At their root, these two views of space are two metaphysics: one grounds existence in being, the other grounds all things in non-being.
What turns this difference into a true “dialogue” is a 20th-century encounter that happened in reverse. The West arrived at void from the opposite direction. Malevich’s “White on White,” Rothko’s color fields, and the reactivation of negative space in abstract painting modern Western art, by hollowing itself out, found itself standing where the East had long been. And so the drama of our moment takes shape: the East moves from void toward being, the West moves from being toward void, and the two paths meet in the middle. This is not a story of influence in one direction, but of two civilizations arriving at each other independently, through their own 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 continuous dialectic between fullness and emptiness, density and permeability so that void and substance are no longer simply a technical question, but a contemporary inquiry into being and nothingness itself.
The twelve artists, whether from East or West, are placed along a single spectrum defined by degrees of void and substance.
At one end: volume and matter. Wolfgang Flad’s organic paintings, made from regenerated materials and double-layered glass filters, occupy physical space the most direct assertion of substance. Yang Yang’s white marble sculptures hold a gentle, noble character within the weight of stone, allowing tenderness to inhabit mass. Chingltu grinds mineral pigments rooted in his own cultural origins into color itself the most elemental grounding of materiality. Sun Yihan frames figures and animals within grid-like wooden structures, cutting across time and space, leaving gaps of voyeuristic possibility between fragmented images.
At the midpoint: where substance and void are both true. Martina Ziegler’s layered paintings combine analog and digital deconstruction, so that the image folds continuously between the real and the illusory. Bay Tang Jiaxin picks apart the fibers of paper with a needle, letting time emerge through repetitive labor within the very material of paper, a latent space rises. Adrian Wald distorts the canvas with unconventional materials, challenging assumptions about a painting’s authenticity and materiality, unsettling the act of viewing itself. Pi Kai separates reality and the virtual across the picture plane, his figures drifting between the two realms for him, void and substance are almost the subject itself.
At the far end: matter begins to dissolve. Eberhard Ross weaves a trembling field of energy from dense, repeated brushstrokes until the painting itself seems to breathe. Zhang Meng’s oils release cloud and freedom, forms dissolving at 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 works of the twelve artists form one continuous spectrum and what is most compelling is that there is no need to identify which brushstroke comes from the East and which from the West. Contemporary art today has moved beyond the point where void and substance mark a civilizational boundary; they are now a shared language for all who create. This is the final fruit of that 20th-century reverse encounter. 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.
Eberhard Ross, Martina Ziegler, Michael Craik, Wolfgang Flad, Adrian Wald, Christiane Grimm, Chingltu, Yang Yang, Bay Tang Jiaxin, 皮凱 Pi Kai, Zhang Meng, Sun Yihan
all images © the gallery and the artist(s)
