After working and creating for a month at the Klein Sun Residency at Millers Falls Art Bridge in rural Massachusetts, the two Chinese artists present multimedia installations across our North and South gallery spaces, unexpectedly converging at various points of their separate bodies of work.

A protégé of the renowned artist Xu Bing, Geng Xue hails from Beijing, a city which dictates much of her interest in Chinese folklore and her recontextualization of traditional ceramic and porcelain. Upon arrival to our residency at Millers Falls in early July, Geng continued her exploration of clay in tandem with her interest in ancient Chinese philosophy, namely the Daoist writings of Zhuangzi. As the residency progressed, she began to draw parallels between the environment around her and the ‘pipes’ or pathways of life described in Zhuangzi’s texts. The resulting work is a spiritual response to the ‘pipes’ found across China and America through an installation in which Geng carves out her own gaps and holes in both two dimensional and three dimensional work.

The multimedia artist Ying Zhu also joins the residency. Having studied in both her native China and the U.S., she is primarily preoccupied with the hybridization of cultures and the human condition. She examines Western culture through distinctly Eastern eyes, creating immersive installations that are at once personal and also are gateways to society. At Millers Falls, she became interested in the materials around her; like a forager, she collected wood and stone and was drawn to the stretched dimensions of time and space that allowed for creative meditation. Exposing details often overlooked by people rushing through life, Zhu creates an installation within the gallery that overturns conventional sight and touch experiences.