Qualia Contemporary Art gallery is pleased to announce its debut presentation at West Bund Shanghai 2026, featuring artists Ru Xiaofan 茹小凡 and Yulia Pinkusevich 尤利娅·平库谢维奇. Born in China and Ukraine respectively, both artists have developed their artistic practices across geographic and cultural boundaries. Their distinct experiences of migration and culture have given rise to highly individual visual languages. Bringing their works together, Qualia celebrates the creative possibilities that emerge from encounters between different cultures, histories, and perspectives.

Ru Xiaofan was born in China but moved to Paris, France in the 1980s. Being of both worlds, he incorporates both Eastern and Western philosophical and cultural symbols into his paintings and sculpture. Though his paintings feature specific historical referents and cultural symbols, the viewer is transported to an eternal, imaginative, hypothetical realm of pure philosophical inquiry.

Ru Xiaofan’s work lives in the tension between self-restriction and freedom, between a secure, protective cage and a full, meaningful life. His series, Bamboos and Birds, is the depiction of humanity’s elective imprisonment. And yet, through Christian allusions to the Garden of Eden, Ru Xiaofan suggests that the submission to desire is inevitable: “Biting the apple is a choice. And everyone, sooner or later, makes that choice.”

Yulia Pinkusevich is an artist of Ukrainian and Siberian descent. While much of her work is visually architectural, geometric and mathematical, engaging with socio-political issues, the two series presented here are more delicate, feminine and spiritual in nature. In her Life Water and Sacred Flames series, her paintings reveal not simply what the elements of water and fire symbolize for humanity, but rather their individual essences. Pinkusevich makes the intangible conceptually stable and material through ink, mica, copper, bone, shell, and seed, revealing the animate in what is often thought inanimate.

In Sacred Flames, fire demands recognition of its dominant presence and recognition of the tension between unconstrained flame, atmosphere and their combustive interaction. Pinkusevich depicts fire’s elegance as well as its destructive and regenerative power. This series is grounded by material remnants of bone, shell, seed which are hung loosely by copper thread and the memory of such a formidable element.

Venue
2A05, West Bund International Convention and Exhibition Center

Artists
Ru Xiaofan, Yulia Pinkusevich

Exhibition Dates
10 Nov – 15 Nov 2026

Website
https://qualiagallery.com/

Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/qualiacontemporaryart

Contact
info@qualiagallery.com

About Artists

Ru Xiaofan

Ru Xiaofan is a contemporary artist born in Nanjing, China, in 1954. He studied calligraphy, traditional Chinese painting and oil painting before joining the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, where he graduated in 1986 after studying in the studios of Olivier Debré and Pierre Alechinsky. The artist was awarded a fellowship at the Casa de Velázquez (1988–1990). His pictorial work, nourished by the dialogue between East and West, explores exile, memory, freedom and metamorphosis through motifs that have become emblematic, such as balloons and the Cent Fleurs series. Exhibited in numerous institutions in France and internationally—including the Musée Guimet, Musée Cernuschi, Villa Tamaris, Today Art Museum (Beijing), He Xiangning Art Museum (Shenzhen), Kunsthalle München, Palais de la Porte Dorée and SAMoCA (Riyadh)—Ru Xiaofan has developed a powerful and poetic visual language, where painting and sculpture meet, balancing contemplation, humour and reflection on the human condition.

Yulia Pinkusevich

Yulia Pinkusevich is an artist and educator born in Kharkiv, Ukraine (USSR). Upon the collapse of the Soviet Union, her family fled the eastern block as refugees, immigrating to New York City. She later relocated to California first to attend college and later graduate school, continuing to reside in the San Francisco Bay Area to this day. She holds a Masters of Fine Arts from Stanford University and Bachelors of Fine Arts from Rutgers University, Mason Gross School of the Arts. Yulia has exhibited nationally and internationally including projects in Paris, France, Buenos Aires, Argentina, London, UK and Athens, Greece.

Yulia’s art is in the public collection of the deYoung Museum, Stanford University, Kiev History Museum, Mills College Art Museum, City of Albuquerque, Google and Meta, amongst others. She was a 2024 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. Other fellowships include Gray Area Arts Foundation, Wildlands, Lucid Arts Foundation, Autodesk Pier 9, Recology, Cite des Arts International Paris, Headlands Center for the Arts, Vashon AIR and many others. Yulia has lectured at Stanford University and is currently an Associate Professor of Studio Art at Northeastern University in Oakland, California.

About Qualia Contemporary Art

Founded in 2020 in the heart of Silicon Valley, Qualia Contemporary Art presents artists with distinct visions, with a particular focus on global Asian, diasporic and female artists.

Taking its name from qualia, the philosophical concept of subjective experience, the gallery celebrates art’s capacity to expand our understanding of ourselves and the world through perception, intuition, memory, and imagination.

Situated at the crossroads of technological innovation and global exchange, Qualia fosters dialogue across artistic traditions and disciplines while supporting artists’ long-term development and connecting their work with collectors and institutions in the Bay Area and worldwide.

(Text and images courtesy of Qualia Contemporary Art)