Slow down and tune into this show's quiet resonance of color, light plus memory

The group exhibition Unspoken Red Swings, which opened on May 17 at Bluerider ART Shanghai, brings together 10 contemporary artists from around the world to explore how color, material, and emotion intertwine in visual art.

Through paintings, installations, and sculptures, the show delves into themes of memory, time, and perception, offering a sensory journey through layered textures and rhythmic brushwork.

The exhibition title is drawn from a line by 11th-century Chinese poet Ouyang Xiu – "Petals drift past the swing, unanswered" – an image of beauty and impermanence that serves as both metaphor and mood. Rather than a literal interpretation, Unspoken Red Swings embraces the emotional undercurrent of the verse, inviting viewers to consider how contemporary art can express the inexpressible, those fleeting sensations and inner tensions that resist language.

At the center of the exhibition is French artist Pascal Dombis, whose three-panel lenticular work pulses with shifting bands of blue, yellow, red, and violet. Created through algorithmic programming, his work explores the chaotic beauty of repetition and digital interference. From afar, the piece evokes the movement of heat or sound; up close, it becomes a kaleidoscope of pixelated tension – always in flux, never fixed.

Janna Watson offers a painterly counterpoint with Smoke Show (2025), a dense, cloudlike composition of gestural strokes layered on a dark background. The Canadian artist's intuitive approach to color and motion transforms raw emotion into rich, tactile forms. The piece suggests a storm of feeling, volcanic yet controlled, hovering between eruption and stillness.

Christiane Grimm of Germany presents a subtle yet striking wall installation composed of semi-transparent panels that obscure and reveal geometric compositions beneath. The optical layering creates a soft blur effect, shifting as the viewer moves. The work speaks to the elusiveness of clarity, how light, perception, and time alter what we see and feel.

Each artist engages with the central idea in their own way: using texture as time, pigment as emotion, and form as a vessel for fleeting thought.

While rooted in a poetic fragment from the past, Unspoken Red Swings is firmly contemporary in its vision. It reimagines traditional notions of beauty and transience through modern materials and conceptual depth. In a world increasingly saturated with noise and distraction, the exhibition offers a space to slow down and tune into the quiet resonance of color, light, and memory.

Date: Through July 20, 2025

Address: 133 Sichuan Road M. 四川中路133号

Admission: Free