Between sentences, verses, and chapters, repetition occurs at the level of diction, rhythm, and even structure. Like arrows shot in swift succession, tips chasing tips. Yet each iteration harbors subtle variations, advancing and intensifying the expression of action and emotion through layered refrains. “Refrain” is naturally equipped with the mnemonic anchors essential to chant, responding to the very structure of the human mind. As a rhetorical device circulating between the folk and the court, an aesthetic mechanism at once generative and creative, “Refrain” will become one of the thematic pillars of Gallery Where’s exhibition series. To let a single theme grow new faces with each return—this itself is a cyclical song.

The group exhibition Refrain: Sideways and Ghosting presents recent works by Huang Peishan, Lei Lei, Wu Zejian, and Zhang Kerui across paintings, still and moving images, sculpture, and site-specific installation, articulated through a spatial structure of correspondences.

Natural landscapes, the fabricated nature, and psychological landscapes ceaselessly shift and overlay one another in the projection of consciousness—an interplay that Huang Peishan’s work continues to examine. Her recent Landscape series takes industrial objects marked by human manufacture as its material, yet arranges, links, and suspends them according to the logic of natural formation, mimicking the morphology of natural scenery. As the once-distant experience of nature is compressed into specific scales, weights, and surfaces, it generates a secondary spatial narrative within the site—a physical entity that invites approach, detour, and bodily encounter.

Lei Lei’s cinematic poems and prose are woven from found images, evoking in the viewer a sense of time and space shaped by memory and imagination through the rhythms and cadences that lie dormant within. His most recent moving-image work, I Desire Nothing More Than to Be Completely Permeated by Sunlight, sets the scattered, indecipherable flickers of the nocturnal city alongside leaves in the process of “Photosynthetic Imaging,” giving rise to scene after scene of intimate and vivid cinematic imagery.

Wu Zejian consciously collects figurative images from magazines, old photographs, and everyday life, especially those moments that spark emotions and imaginations beyond the image itself. His recent small-scale paintings typically depict only the side or back of a solitary figure, enveloped in an atmosphere at once gentle and distant, pointing to a frozen moment where layered emotions are held in restrained obscurity. The same emotional motif returns across different canvases, repeatedly telling of those proximities that remain forever beyond reach.

Haribo Bear Turns into a Human in Summer, The Flower Bed Moves at Night, Peacock Man, Monkey Man, Frog Man… When viewers read the titles Zhang Kerui assigns to her works, their first impressions of the imagery are often unsettled. The narrative quality of language extends an imaginative space beyond the image, transforming painting into a channel of translation between the artist’s everyday reality and her fantasies. A Haribo gummy bear that has fallen to the ground gradually melts under the summer heat. Through repeated cycles of layering, washing, and re-layering with multiple painting materials, this initial image undergoes a gradual enrichment, loss, and deformation of its material texture—until it finally “turns into a human.”

Venue
6 Tieyingnanxiang Alley, Dongcheng District, Beijing

Artists
Huang Peishan, Lei Lei, Wu Zejian, Zhang Kerui

Exhibition Dates
Sep 12 – Nov 29, 2026

Gallery Hours
Wednesday– Sunday | 11 AM – 6 PM

Website
https://gallerywhere.com

Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/gallery._.where/

Contact
info@gallerywhere.com

About Artists

Huang Peishan (b. 1994, Dali, Yunnan) received her B.A. from the School of Advertising at Communication University of China in 2018, and her M.F.A. from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2022. She currently lives and works between Shanghai and New York. Her practice employs photography, image-making, flexible sculpture, and site-specific installation with mixed media as primary mediums, exploring the dynamic intertextuality between physical and emotional landscapes, as well as the poetic resonance between objects and space. Her recent research focuses on artificial nature and spatial narrative, and their symbolic and practical significance in the contemporary context.

Her recent solo exhibitions include: Cracks on the Curtain, Fotografiska, Shanghai (2026); Imagine an Arrow Turning Back, Inna Art Space, Hangzhou (2025); Six Questions on the Fountain, 743 ART Lab, Shanghai (2025); Walking the Labyrinth, BA Project, Shenzhen (2024); Reunion in an Instant, Moumou Space, Beijing (2024); The Site of Reproduction, Magician Space, Shanghai (2024); Ripples and Folds, Inna Art Space, Hangzhou (2023); Artist’s Table, Inna Art Space, New York (2023); re:replicate, :iidrr Gallery, New York (2022); Paradise, Kongshan Art Museum, Hangzhou (2021). Her works have been exhibited at Chambers Fine Art, New York; M+B Gallery, Los Angeles; Latitude Gallery, New York; San Sheng Art Space, Toronto; Three Shadows Photography Art Centre, Beijing; ShanghART Gallery, Shanghai; OX Warehouse, Macau; and Chengdu Times Art Museum, among others.

Lei Lei’s (b. 1985, Nanchang, Jiangxi) works are based on the organization and research of ready-made and found images, combined with digital shooting and parody, weaving together abandoned images, oral histories, fragmented online videos, official documentaries, commercial product catalogs, myths or legends, etc., to create visual poetry and prose. Lei Lei’s art works include films, live music and drama.

His video installation works have been exhibited in institutions such as the UCCA in Beijing, Shanghai OCAT Art Museum, Xi’an OCAT Art Museum, Shanghai MOCA Art Center, Tokyo TOP Museum, and Rencontres d’Arles International Photography Festival in France, and have been collected by important art institutions and art galleries. In addition, Lei Lei’s film works have been selected and won awards at important international film festivals including the Berlinale Film Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, New York MoMA NFND, Melbourne Film Festival, and Hong Kong International Film Festival.

Wu Zejian (b. 1993, Chaozhou, Guangdong Province) received his Master’s degree from Central China Normal University in 2017, and subsequently studied painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Carrara in Italy, where he obtained another Master’s degree. He currently lives and works between Huizhou and Shenzhen, Guangdong. Wu Zejian’s work examines the distances and emotional relationships between individuals in an era of rapid technological development. Drawing inspiration from found photographs, newspaper and magazine illustrations, as well as everyday snapshots, he depicts the ineffable pain and struggle of figures in various situations, reflecting a shared emotional experience of contemporary life.

He has held a solo exhibition at Wind H Art Center, Beijing, and his works have been exhibited at Guangdong Museum of Art; O2ART, Beijing; innerflow Gallery, Beijing; EDA Art Space, Shenzhen; Chotei Gallery, Tokyo; A60 Space and Fondazione Arte Contemporanea, Milan, among others.

Zhang Kerui (b. 1991, Guangxi Province) received her MFA in Painting from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia in Italy, and has been teaching at East China Normal University since 2017. She currently lives and works in Shanghai. Her practice examines the morphologies and survival strategies developed by organisms through evolution, drawing inspiration from phenomena such as mimicry, metamorphosis, and symbiosis. She is particularly interested in creatures that respond to their environments through camouflage, transformation, or prolonged evolutionary adaptation. Working across painting, ceramics, and copperplate printmaking, she recombines the forms, behaviors, and colors of different species to construct a visual language situated between reality and fable.

Her works have been exhibited at Power Station of Art, Shanghai; ANNEX Space, Fosun Foundation, Shanghai; Shanghai Jing’an Sculpture Park; UCCA Yixing Ceramic Museum; UCCA Dune Art Museum, Aranya; Art+ Shanghai Gallery; Totalab; AIKE Gallery; M Art Space; Dangxia Art Space; V Art Center; Mustard Seed Space; Palazzo Saluzzo, Turin; and Sapienza University of Rome, among others.群展「复沓：侧身与重影」展览现场，Gallery Where，北京，2026 Exhibition view of “Refrain: Sideways and Ghosting”, Gallery Where, Beijing, 2026

(Text and images courtesy of Gallery Where)