SWANFALL GALLERY is pleased to present the group exhibition Chez Moi from 1 - 8 May 2025 at Gallery 46
"The Master said, 'Zilu has reached the hall, but has not yet entered the inner chamber.'"
- Confucius: The Analects, translated by D.C. Lau
In classical Chinese philosophy, “ascending the hall” (升堂) symbolises the
initial mastery of a discipline, while “entering the inner chamber” (入室) signifies reaching a state of complete enlightenment - a process of progression from mere perception to profound understanding. Reflecting this progression, the exhibition brings together works by artists represented by SWANFALL GALLERY, selected emerging voices, and significant pieces on loan from private collections. The Artworks are selected to articulate a progression from form to concept - a trajectory from hall to chamber
Departing from the neutrality of the white cube, Chez Moi is purposefully staged at Gallery 46. Once a private residence, the space has been converted into a contemporary art venue, retaining much of its original domestic architecture and spatial divisions. This environment establishes a discursive space in which the affective and experiential dimensions of artistic expression intersect with lived reality
Titled Chez Moi (登堂入室), the exhibition emphasise the emotional and lived experiences that underpin artistic creation. The notion of home, a space shaped by routine, intimacy, and personal memory - becomes both the subject and the setting. By placing artworks within familiar, lived-in environments, the exhibition fosters a continuous viewing pathway, creating an intimate yet confrontational viewing experience
Chez Moi proposes a way of seeing grounded in proximity, sensitivity, and attention. It traces a passage through the thresholds between the mundane and the symbolic, the visible and the felt. This is a movement through space, also a a process of introspection: In witnessing the lives and textures of others, we return, with greater intimacy, to the contours of ourselves
CURATORIAL STATEMENT
“To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.”- E.E. Cummings
When we reflect on what renders a work of art meaningful, we look not to categorical definitions or fixed criteria, but to its capacity to affect - to unsettle, arrest, and endure. A work becomes significant when it interrupts the rhythm of daily life, not through what it illustrates, but through what it provokes. Its relevance lies in the ability to awaken something latent in the viewer. It is within this liminal space - between affect and cognition - that a work asserts its presence. Its value does not lie in explanation, but in resonance - in the way it elicits a response beyond articulation. At its most essential, art is a form that grants presence to the inexpressible
Chez Moi unfolds as an inquiry into unvarnished reality - into forms of truth that are intimate, chaotic, tender, or unresolved. Rather than situating the works within the abstraction of a conventional gallery setting, the exhibition inhabits the domestic: the site of lived experience, where space is shaped by memory, conflict, affection, and desire
The domestic interior - specifically, the space of the home - offers a context shaped by intimacy rather than neutrality. In its repetitions and routines, its accumulated traces and textures, the home becomes a space where emotion unfolds without pretence. Behind closed doors lies not only the architecture of daily life, but also the residue of longing, tenderness, shame, and all that resists articulation
This space held the weight of human presence: solitude and companionship, ambiguity and rupture, desire and withdrawal, conflict and reconciliation, dependence and escape, promise and betrayal. It held the lingering unease, the unspoken shame, the sadness that came without warning, the hesitation before making a choice, or the discontent that followed fulfilment. It carried the intimacy once shared with another, and tug-of-war with oneself - all that remains unforgettable, the fear echoes within, the undisclosed desires and unspeakable truth
When artworks enter the chambers - they no longer serve as an aesthetic escape from reality. They become a way of returning to it, of engaging again with what is often overlooked or left unspoken. Viewing is no longer a passive act, but a deliberate transgression - a gesture of shared intent between artists and curators. It is a permitted access, a fragile acceptance for intrusion, and a delicate, continuous negotiation of distance and desire, trust and trespass, boundary and belonging
The act of viewing becomes, in this context, a conscious transgression - one shaped not by passive observation, but by mutual implication. It is an a subtle c complicity, an invitation extended by both artist and the curators. It is a sanctioned closeness, a guarded acceptance of intrusion. It is a negotiation - delicate and unresolved - around proximity, trust, boundary, and recognition
We hope to offer a way of seeing - one that leads the viewer between the everyday and the artistic, between what is seen and what is felt. We are never simply looking at art, never merely observing others. In every act of looking, we are searching for a part of ourselves
“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
- Anaïs Nin
Once Upon A Time (The Parlour)
Exhibiting Artist
Dien Berziga / James Lang
Marie-Therese Heublein
Mark Lawson Bell
A Warm Gathering (The Living Room)
Exhibiting Artist
Christine Lee
Dine With Me (The Dining Room)
Exhibiting Artist
Huang Wei/ Tommy Jayne Petherick
Good Morning (The Study)
Fergus Channon
Ashes to Ashes (The Secret Chamber)
Anaïs Öst
Lucas Bullens
Tommy Jayne Petherick
Zhu Yiming
Shared Secrets (The Playroom)
Anaïs Öst
Cizzoe Yi Wang
Fernando M. Romero
Hu Zeqia
Qiu Jiahao
Ruiji Han
Tan Miao
Tong Mo
Yuming Lu
Zhong Qian