Transcendence

Artist: Tianshu Zhang | Xian Tao | Gloria Fan Duan

July 11 – September 5, 2026

Opening: July 11, 2026, 4–8 pm

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Tao Xian, Sea Angel II (detail), 2025. Oil on Canvas, 40 x 40 inches

Selected Works

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Tianshu Zhang, Untitled, 2026. Oil on Canvas, 36 x 72 inches

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Tao Xian, Tempered Light No.1, 2025.Oil on Canvas, 47.5 x 47.2 inches

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Gloria Fan Duan, Hybrid No. 004, 2026.Resin, steel pins, glass, monofilament, perfume, 45 x 35 x 35 inches

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(New York – June 2026) Fou Gallery is pleased to present Transcendence, a group exhibition featuring Tianshu Zhang (张天舒), Xian Tao(陶显), and Gloria Fan Duan(樊段晓春), on view from July 11 through September 5, 2026.

As in the philosophy of the I-Ching [易经], the world is not an empty abstraction, but a living structure of patterns through which all things transform. At a moment when attention is increasingly pulled outward by speed, image, and instability, Transcendence turns inward, inviting viewers to explore within for the subtle flow of energy that connects body, mind, and the natural world...

(New York – June 2026) Fou Gallery is pleased to present Transcendence, a group exhibition featuring Tianshu Zhang (张天舒), Xian Tao(陶显), and Gloria Fan Duan(樊段晓春), on view from July 11 through September 5, 2026.

As in the philosophy of the I-Ching [易经], the world is not an empty abstraction, but a living structure of patterns through which all things transform. At a moment when attention is increasingly pulled outward by speed, image, and instability, Transcendence turns inward, inviting viewers to explore within for the subtle flow of energy that connects body, mind, and the natural world...

Bringing together painting and sculpture, the exhibition considers abstraction not as a rejection of form, but as a way of approaching what cannot be fully represented: spirit, dream, memory, and the quiet forces that shape both human and natural existence. Through bodies, imagined organisms, and reconstructed botanical forms, Transcendence explores the traces of inner energy moving between consciousness and the unconscious, creating a path for viewers to enter a realm of inner light, meditation, and spiritual perception.

For Tianshu Zhang, painting emerges from the threshold between dream and embodiment. Drawing inspiration from the imperceptible yet constant flow of Qi, her paintings seek a balance between silhouette-like structures and fluid movement. Through layered brushwork, Zhang evokes the body in abstraction, where flesh, spine, and inner currents appear only partially, as if sensing the presence of energy moving within. The body becomes a vessel through which consciousness moves between memory, desire, vulnerability, and transformation.

Xian Tao approaches this spiritual interiority through the imagined life of nature. Drawing from Daoist thought, Jungian psychology, and organic forms, she creates luminous semi-abstract paintings that occupy a space between organism and inner landscape. In works inspired by deep-sea plants and imagined botanical forms, Tao allows imagination to become a mode of perception, suggesting a silent energy shared between the individual soul and the larger universe. The visible traces of nature become vessels for psychic and spiritual life, where the boundary between self and world remains fluid.

Gloria Fan Duan extends the exhibition’s inquiry into nature, perception, and unseen forces through a practice situated at the intersection of art, science, and technology. Conceived during NARS Foundation (Brooklyn, New York), An And Foundation (Wassaic, New York) and Fou Gallery’s Tulum Residency (Mexico), the series presented in this exhibition combines cast resin and glass flowers, leaves, and stems with handmade vessels, assembling them into sculptural installations inspired by Japanese ikebana. Through mediation, preservation, and deliberate arrangement, Duan reconstructs nature in translucent botanical forms that hover between specimen and offering, garden and laboratory, occupying a threshold between existence and non-existence. No longer living plants yet still carrying the trace of organic life, these works offer a material counterpart to Zhang’s bodily energies and Tao’s imagined spiritual organisms. The processes of preservation, reproduction, and arrangement become forms of meditation, suggesting that the artificial may also serve as a vessel for care, ecological memory, and spiritual attention

Through the body, the imagined organism, and the reconstructed garden, form becomes a threshold through which inner energy, memory, and spiritual perception may appear. Rather than presenting transcendence as escape, the exhibition understands it as a process of attunement, a way of sensing what exists beneath the visible. Installed as a quiet and immersive environment, Transcendence invites viewers to move through the works as they might move through a breath cycle, a dream, or a moment of meditation, entering a space where the visible world opens onto its unseen dimensions. In this suspended space, transcendence becomes a quiet practice of returning to the energies that bind the self to the world.

*The press release is based on the essay by Helena Jin, edited by Iris Zhang.

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Artists

Tianshu Zhang(b.1994, China) is a New York-based painter who received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Texas at Austin and a Master of Fine Arts from the School of Visual Arts in New York. Her works have been exhibited internationally, including a solo exhibition at Gallery Func, Shanghai (2023); Chilli Art Project, London (2024); New Image Art, Los Angeles (2024); Latitude Gallery, New York (2023/2025); Chambers Fine Art, New York (2023); LatchKey Gallery, New York (2023); Elza Kayal Gallery, New York (2023); Loft 121 (2023); Village One Gallery, New York (2021); Mana Contemporary, Jersey City (2025); and the Jersey City Free Library Creative Arts Center, Jersey City (2026).

Tao Xian (b. 1991, Anhui, China)  earned her B.F.A. from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in 2013 and her M.F.A. from Parsons School of Design in 2016. Her work has been exhibited internationally across Asia and North America, including solo exhibitions at Soul Art Center (Beijing, 2025), Enclave Contemporary (Shenzhen, 2023), L·AN Gallery (Shenzhen, 2022), Asian Art Platform (Singapore, 2019), and Fukiage Museum of Art (Okayama, 2016). Tao is a recipient of the CAAC Full Scholarship and the Parsons Dean’s Scholarship. She currently lives and works in Shanghai.

Gloria Fan Duan (b.1993, Amherst, U.S.A.) is an interdisciplinary artist working across sculpture, painting, new media, and installation. She graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design of Painting (B.F.A.) in 2015 and Art and Technology/Sound Practices from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (M.F.A. ) in 2020.  Gloria Fan Duan currently serves on the faculty at The New School at Parsons School of Design (New York)  and Pratt Institute (New York). Gloria Fan Duan’s practice engages ecological and cultural thresholds across geographies as a way of exploring how we locate ourselves within stratified and shifting worlds. She has exhibited internationally at venues and festivals including Ars Electronica (2020), Currents New Media Festival (2025/2023), Digerati Experimental Media Festival (2020), and Art Basel (2022). While engaging globally, she continues to prioritize local and community art spaces. Reviewed in The Washington Post, her first solo exhibition, Mobius Wave, was presented at Hillyer International Arts & Artists (2017) in the Washington, D.C. area. Since then, she has cultivated a global community through collaborative and commissioned projects, including The Bonsai Paradox with the Chicago Botanic Garden (2019) and The Pursuit of Harmony with La Prairie and the Bauhaus Dessau Foundation (2021–2022), which was featured in Architectural Digest, Vogue, and Vanity Fair. She has also received support from the Andy Warhol Foundation’s Interlace Grant (2024/2023) and held fellowships at Pratt Institute (2023/2022/2021) and the NARS Foundation (2025).

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Curator

Helena Jin is a curator and researcher based between New York and Shanghai. She holds a B.A. from Barnard College and an M.A. from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts. She will join the Los Angeles County Museum of Art as a curatorial fellow beginning in September 2026. Her research focuses on Buddhist art history and contemporary art practices that engage with spirituality and metaphysical inquiry. Jin also manages the Simian Foundation, her family’s art collection and foundation, widely recognized as one of the most prominent contemporary art foundations in mainland China. The foundation holds over 300 works by some of the most significant postwar and contemporary artists, including Mark Tansey, Agnes Martin, David Hockney, Sean Scully, Cecily Brown, and Julie Mehretu et al. In addition to its major holdings, the Simian Foundation actively cultivates emerging artists through long-term support, research, and institutional collaboration, with a strong commitment to the development of younger generations of practitioners.

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