Ye Fan | Zai Pengfei: Dwelling Nowhere

To dwell is to linger, to inhabit, to find a place of repose. Non-dwelling, conversely, is to refuse stagnation in any single locus, to hold no attachment to any form or phenomenon. It is not anchored in shape, nor in appearance; it belongs neither to the past nor to the future. It generates within flux and dissipates within flux. It never truly stays in the same place, yet it never truly vanishes. This exhibition presents works by Ye Fan and Zai Pengfei. In Ye Fan’s series Weather and Poem of Time, her clouds are not fixed; they refuse to be possessed. The moment of encounter is, in itself, the moment of dissipation. In Zai Pengfei’s new series, The Drifting of a Sheet of Paper, lines are compressed to the very edges of the paper. “I” observe from a singular perspective—scrutinizing the evidence of existence, and reflecting the desire to find a place of anchorage in the world.

When we cease trying to grasp We instead coexist with all things. Ye Fan’s clouds do not dwell in form; they regenerate in every dissipation. Zai Pengfei’s paper does not dwell in trajectory; every drift is a new experience. When I no longer cling to the distinction between “self” and “object,” no longer obsess over the opposition of “useful” and “useless,” and no longer anxious about “retaining” versus “losing,” I flow with the clouds, drift with the paper, transform with the water, and bend with the nails. The clouds over Loughborough, the nails at the Shanghai construction site, the ink traces on rice paper, and ourselves—we are all in the same drift, the same transformation, the same dissipation. We never truly stay in the same place, yet we never truly vanish. We invite you to: See eternity within dissipation. See existence within traces. Find dwelling within non-dwelling.