A Waking Dream
at Fou Gallery, New York
Exhibition Review by Eunice Yuyue Chen, June 22, 2026
A Waking Dream is a group show featuring three female multidisciplinary artists, Wendy Letven, Sascha Mallon, and Davina Hsu, currently on view at Fou Gallery, curated by Echo He. Through multiple mediums, ceramics, paintings, crochet, and sculpture, the works subtly conjure a poetic, fairy-tale wonderland, inviting us to encounter our essential selves, echoing the Buddhist concept of Avalokiteśvara (观自在), the one who perceives with liberated awareness.
The exhibition unfolds like a waking dream. Entering the gallery, I was surrounded by delicate porcelain birds tinged with pink and green underglaze, appearing to drift gently toward an unknown horizon.
Do they dream as well?
I found myself asking this question. If they could dream, what kind of dream would it be? Or perhaps any dream would do.
On the left side of the entrance, Sascha Mallon's Dem Herzen Vertrauen — Courage, Dear Heart greets us like an echo of the ancient myth of the Lupa Capitolina, the legendary she-wolf who nursed the twin founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus.There is a primal tenderness that resonates deeply through Mallon's work: a quiet, fierce protection woven into every thread and fragment of porcelain. The white cotton holds broken pieces together; the red pulses through like a heartbeat. Together they shape the image of a female body, speaking of a nurturing force that is neither soft nor weak, but deeply, stubbornly alive.
Wandering into the first gallery room, I fell further into Mallon's dream wonderland. Four installations inhabit the space: Consequences of a Broken Sky, Zwischen Eis und Blüten — Falling into Form, Däumelinchen — Thumbelina, and Das Ewig Strebende Herz — Unyielding Heart. The floral and faunal scents dissolve into the vibrant porcelain. The tiger in the dark, the roses on the thorns, the wolf in the wild — each figure carries its own quiet mythology, coaxing us deeper into a state suspended between waking and sleep.
Turning to the right wall, I was drawn into Davina Hsu's realm, a vulnerable yet warmly resonant dream, wherein her works strive to remain resilient in the face of stress. Hsu soulfully speaks to the bizarre mythologies surrounding natural crystals and soft wools: their alleged power to draw in love, open the heart chakra, and inspire courage. The natural wool and soft form become spiritual shields, protecting us from an overly complicated and disconnected future. Tridacna, Apatite, Carnelian, and Herkimer Diamond transmute anxiety into serenity. Light passes through the undulating fabric, shifting into countless colors and scattered luminous spots, floating in the subconsciousness.
Following Hsu's works along the wall toward the far end of the gallery, I arrived where the dream deepened into Wendy Letven's world of light and shadow. Suspended in the corner, her sculpture Echolocation hovers between the oil paintings The State of Things and Outliers, invoking a sense of synesthesia: from the whale's echo, one imagines nonlinear waves of soundspace, rendered through fluid, flowing lines that give form to emotion. Letven's practice delineates the outlines and contours of nebulous emotions, softens their structure, and renders the unseen tangible. The non-linear perspective is not only confined to the frame, but extends into sculptures, lights, and shadows — drifting, as dreams do.
The exhibition draws to a close with paintings Day Break (2026) and Night Fall (2026), evoking a half-dreaming, half-waking state. Together, the three artists tend to their inner worlds through myth, poetry, divination, and fable. For it is that same vulnerability which makes us most exposed that also becomes the source of our greatest strength, because the capital machine we live in will try to grind us into dust anyway, whether or not we speak. In a city where rationalism and materialism encroach on all sides, those who feel impoverished by the withering of the spiritual have sought, consciously or not, to keep something ineffable alive — and here, in this quiet gallery, the dream breathes on, unyielding.
About the Writer:
Eunice Yuyue Chen (Chongqing, China), is an independent curator and writer based between New York and Los Angeles. She received her M.A. in Curatorial Practice from the School of Visual Arts and her M.M. in Accounting and Finance from the University of Melbourne.