Between Worlds: The Intangible Thread
Xinran Guan and Sophy Chang at Gallery 456, New York​
Image: (Clockwise from top) Xinran Guan, Cute Prisoner, 2024. Oil on Panel, 10 x 8 inches; Sophy Chang, Untitled, 2025. Plywood, mesh fabric, foam ball, pin, 22 x 8 x 12 inches. Sophy Chang, Bare Form, 2025. Plywood, oil-based paint, polyurethane foam, acrylic, resin, 9 x 15 x 9 inches.
by Minkyou Jun, New York, October 20, 2025
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Brooklyn-based artists Xinran Guan and Sophy Chang stage Gallery 456 as a site of encounter and reflection. In Between Worlds: The Intangible Thread, features oil paintings with dynamic brushstrokes and vibrant sculptural figures made from various materials. The artworks by the two artists seem to possess different visual logics and narratives, but these differences provide a clue as to how to embrace them within a visual dialogue, blurring the boundaries of individuals, worlds, and art itself.
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The story of the first meeting between the artists was also a process of expanding each other’s worlds. Perhaps the collaborative show was coincidental, but the artworks became a starting point for their conversation. The two artists said they met at their Bushwick studio in the same building and liked each other’s work there. However, as the name of this exhibition implies, they are artists in different worlds: Guan mostly deploys oil painting, while Chang usually focuses on sculpture and installation. When they saw each other’s pieces, they said what captured their eyes was the use of color. This shared chromatic sensibility fostered a dialogue between the two artists, inviting us to consider how their random encounter allowed them to blur the border of their respective artistic worlds.
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Indeed, the two artists never yield when it comes to using color in their works, which unexpectedly makes the juxtaposed artworks harmonious. Guan’s Cute Prisoner (2024) and Chang’s Untitled (2025) demonstrate how their colors echo one another. The unicorn-like object in Guan’s painting seems to be caged in the deep purplish circular hole. In the lower half, Guan draws the viewer’s attention to what appears to be curious red petals or drops of blood. Nearby, Chang’s installation —a foam ball covered with purple mesh fabric—resonates with Guan’s painting when we find red-dotted pins fixed on it. This common thread of using color overarches all the artworks in the gallery.
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However, it is obvious that they are working within different visual logics. Guan focuses on the brushwork and forms an object within it. Inspired by the Taoist idea of the “harmony and oneness of all things,” Guan merges various dimensions through her paintings so that shapes overlap and transform, reverberating the relationships between self and world. In Gato (2025), Guan employs an object as an entry to explore visually constructed spaces. A cat-like green object in the upper right corner suggests a starting point for viewers to imagine a narrative inside the painting. In the center of the gallery, Angel (2022) draws viewers in with its heavy, bold brushstrokes, capturing them inside many layers of mesmerizing blue. Much like the Abstract Expressionist painter Joan Mitchell, Guan uses violent brushstrokes with impressive colors to shape a theme of the work. Upon closer looking, however, the painting gradually appears to contain an anthropomorphic figure with wings. Guan leads us to revisit the brushstrokes and then to recognize that the two-dimensional canvas actually acquires a deeper spatial quality when we look closer. The painting emerges into a canvas on which people can explore and negotiate multiple layers of dimension. ​​
Xinran Guan, Angel, 2022. Oil on canvas, 56 x 56.5 inches
On the other hand, Chang addresses a tension within her materials to let them speak for themselves. Hand in Hand (2025) consists of two wooden panels, but here the encounter between them alludes to more than just a physical meeting. Each panel seems to embody one world, and Chang decorates it with what appears to be a visualization of nerve cells. The inner state of this world is not stable; a pastel color is smeared on the panel, and studs are fixed on it. Gift Box 1 (2022) further illustrates the explosion of an inner state. A clear acrylic box does not successfully contain soft fluffy cushions. Instead, the cushions attempt to burst out of the box’s frame. While the usage of solid material alludes to an individualized being, the material inside seems to represent emotional experiences we sometimes hold inside ourselves or fail to keep in—whether it is love or anger. A stark tactile contrast between the wooden or acrylic panel and the polyurethane foam or cushion seems to reveal an attempt to conceal complex, immanent feelings, but eventually they pop up and connect to the outside world.
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Through the interplay of two artists’ distinct forms, an intertwined harmony emerges—one that invites viewers to enter, feel, and respond. When juxtaposed together, the works of Guan and Chang create an ongoing conversation between their two different visual worlds: Chang’s installations extend outward and reach for connection, while Guan’s paintings become vessels that embrace Chang’s sharp, tactile fragments, guiding viewers to jump into various visual realities. The visual language that the two artists produce through this interaction allows viewers to participate and create their own experiences. In other words, the gallery turns into an intimate space where the artworks displayed there mirror the emotional response of the viewer.
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The show unfolds as more than a dialogue between two artists as a result of this reciprocal interaction; it becomes a re-imagination of how we perceive and inhabit the world. The visual language that Guan and Chang construct extends beyond the boundaries of self, allowing viewers to step outside their frames and sense a shared, expanded reality. While the artists do not present a singular, definitive message, they leave it open for us to participate in and therefore allow us to transform our ways of seeing others. The show reveals a two-person story of visual communication, but also invites us to roam between the visible and invisible worlds that make it possible to connect with one another.
Sophy Chang, Gift Box 1, 2022. Fabric, yarn, fiberfill, plywood, wire, acrylic box, 25 x 30 x 25 inches.
(From left to right) Installation view of Xinran Guan’s Untitled, Creek, Dreamer, Toasty Den, and Sophy Chang’s Hand in Hand, Gift Box 2, and Gift Box 1 in Between Worlds: The Intangible Thread.