Engaging with gesture and environment, the works of Emily Kelly and Xuanlynn Wang unfold within a field of material awareness. Their distinct practices converge in a shared exploration of how bodies and materials shape our collective perception and experience through nature.

Emily Kelly approaches sculpture and drawing as structures of contact. Wax, textiles, plaster and paper are layered, melted, perforated and assembled through multiple manual gestures that leave visible traces of resistance and transformation. Oscillating between different dimensions, her hybrid constructions occupy a space where surfaces behave like bodies and materials retain the memory of touch. For the first time, she explores drawing as a primary medium, investigating the potential of the drawn image.

Xuanlynn Wang's artistic practice hinges on photography, material processes, and a performative sensitivity to “Environmental Consciousness Hypothesis”. Using analogue images that document fleeting moments and the textures of urban and natural environments, she incorporates photographic fragments into material forms. These reconstructed environments suggest that perception is never isolated, but continually shaped by the subtle influences that surround and infuse us.

Together, their works occupy an intermediate space between structure and gesture, image and matter, body and environment. Through tactile processes and layered material vocabularies, the exhibition offers a space where boundaries blur and perception becomes porous. Within these delicate constructions, surfaces accumulate gestures, materials become carriers of memory, and at a certain point, calm takes over from transformation.

Text by Haleh Chinikar & Shantee VGZ

Curated by Shantee Van Gilsen Zaman