Celestial Pabulum
Diane Chappalley
Lau Yee Vanessa Fong
Qian Qian
Marlene Steyn
Lian Zhang
curator： Valerie Conghui Wang
31st July 2024 – 06th August 2025
Opening 31st July 18:00 – 20:30
In 1958, on what might have been an ordinary evening, Remedios Varo quietly painted her work Papilla Estelar— a robed woman sits alone in a narrow tower, grinding stardust into celestial porridge with a strange contraption, feeding it to a moon trapped behind a barred window. That blurred, weeping, half-awake moon seems to mirror the artist herself during her years of exile: enclosed in a confined space, yet continually drawing nourishment from the cosmos, nurturing hope within captivity. The painting is not only a private myth of surrealism, but also a potent metaphor for how the human spirit seeks and generates sustenance in times of turmoil and solitude.
“Celestial Pabulum”— this is not only a poetic image, but also an unwavering conviction. In an era shadowed by oppression, fatigue, and fractured perception, we still choose to believe that a glimmer of light from the deep cosmos is being retranslated, transmuted, and offered a new through human hands. This exhibition begins from such belief, inviting artists to engage in a dialogue that traverses dream and reality, external image and internal vision. Their works are no longer static images, but vessels of time, echoes of emotion, annotations of the spirit.
Many of the artists featured in this exhibition are women. Their practices — whether soft and subtle, or ruptured and metamorphic — seem to converge around a shared lineage: a mode of creation that treats the body as a vessel of perception and lived experience as the raw material of the soul. Much like Varo, cloistered in her tower, transmuting stars through the labor of her hands, these women artists construct their own logic of expression — nonlinear, intuitive, and deeply embodied. For them, image-making is not merely a gesture of self-expression, but a method of survival and spiritual alchemy. In these intimate laboratories, they blend personal and cosmic elements into a porridge of their own making — tender and resolute — nourishing futures whose names have not yet been spoken.
In Marlene Steyn’s tangled compositions and morphing bodies, we read a kind of dreamlike, soft resistance. Zhang Lian’s images hover between solid and blurred, like watermark traces of memories not yet named. Qian Qian renders emotional particles at an atomic scale, drawing with watercolor and pencil as if reconstructing the ruins of a lost future. In The Egg Is The World, Vanessa Fong allows a cosmic shell to gently crack open — what lies inside may not be rebirth, but fragments of forgotten time. Each artist, in her own way, enacts a private alchemical ritual, attempting to reassemble experience from fragments, distilling spiritual energy from within confined spaces.
This exhibition seeks to extend Varo’s enduring concern for the human condition. Through a transposition of visual language, we hope to convert this gaze — once cast from a narrow tower — into a resonance that meets our own era. Between the metaphors of stardust and prison windows, we pose a quiet question about what it means to live today. These images are no longer escapist dreams, but another kind of deep mapping of reality — an artistic response to the ongoing task of survival. We do not propose fixed answers, only an invitation: to pause, like that captive moon, at the window within the painting, and slowly drink in a spoonful of spirit-fed nourishment from the firmament.
-by Valerie Conghui Wang
About The Artists
Diane Chappalley (b. 1991, in Switzerland) lives and works in London creates figurative landscapes in oil paint as well as ceramic sculptures that draw on transitional experiences of death and birth, loss and love, trauma and resilience. She addresses themes that are both personal and inherently universal.
In her large canvases, among vast washes of colours that suggest both soil and skin tones, the human figures are still – as if they are carved from stone; statues lost in time. Surrounded by anxious flowers as markers of ritual, her work is deeply spiritual and psychological.
It reflects on our primal emotions, our capacity for rebirth, and our relationship with the natural world.
Solo & duo exhibitions include: Constellation, Solo show, Lychee One Gallery, London, UK(2023); The Flowers are Witness, Solo Show, Taymour Grahne Project, London, UK(2022); Death, In Bloom!, duo show with James Jessiman, Artworks Project Space, London, UK(2022); The Auguries, duo show with Anna Reading, Informality Gallery, UK(2020); Behind Closed Doors, Informality Gallery, Oxforshire ,UK(2019);Diane Chappalley & Georgia Sowerby, duo show, SET Space, London, UK(2019); The present is already gone, duo show with Antonia Showering, Chalton Gallery, London, UK(2018); Alice Bailly Award, duo show with Noémie Doge, Espace CHUV, Lausanne, CH(2018); POND, Academy of Visual Arts Gallery, duo show with Anna Reading, Kaitak Gallery, HKBU, Hong Kong, HK(2017);
Recent group shows: Imagined States: Chapter 2 “Intrinsicality”, WOAW Gallery, Group Show Hong Kong, HK (2024); KIAF, presentation by COB Gallery, Seoul, ROK(2023); Cross Breeze, curated by Domenico Dechirico, Oneroom Gallery, London, UK(2023); Landscape, Taymour Grahne Project, London, UK(2022); The Throat of the Snake, COMA Gallery, Sydney, AUS(2022);Somewhere in Time, Tube Culture Hall, Milan, IT(2022); Conversation with Memory, Cedric Bardawil, London UK(2022); Invisible Dragon, Cedric Bardawil, Cromwell Place, London, UK(2021); Aora Space, nature / nurture, online(2021); Casa Da Dona Laura, group show, Casa do Capitao, Lisbon, PT(2021);
Lau Yee Vanessa Fong (b.1997, Hong Kong, China) is a London-based visual artist who has recently completed her MA in Painting from the Royal College of Art. Prior to this, she earned her BFA in Fine Art from the Art Center College of Design in 2021. Her creative work is profoundly influenced by Buddhist and Eastern culture and philosophy, depicting a personal journey of spiritual self-healing after experiencing trauma. She explores the quest for self-identity while reinterpreting Buddhismin a modern visual language.
Recent exhibitions includes Malerei, akku Kunstplattform, Emmenbrücke, Switzerland(2025); Fantasyland, Twilight Contemporary, London, UK(2025); Invited Worlds, Speiro Projects, London, UK(2024); Delphian Open Call 2024 winners exhibition, Delphian Gallery and Unit 1 Gallery|Workshop, London, UK(2024); I Am Rooted, But I Flow, Maison Lune and MEY Gallery, Los Angeles, USA(2024); Royal College of Art 2024 Post Graduate Exhibition, London, UK(2024); ÈTER SPACE, Ethereal Maison, London, UK(2024)
Qian Qian (b.1990, China), graduated in 2018 from MFA Fine Art in Goldsmiths, University of London. Through paintings and interactive installations, Qian Qian makes works of “ecomythicism,” a re-envisioned ecosystem through which she examines the fluid transmigration of the body from fixed material form into energy, memory, and information. Her works challenge ways of seeing and summoning states of trance, ecstasy, curiosity, awe, sublime and a quiet sense of exile.
Solo & duo exhibitions include:Duo solo The Light Burns the Reality, Sixi Museum, Nanjing China; Portals To The Past,Lychee One, London UK (2024); Duo Solo In Her Landscape, Lychee One, London UK(2023); Metempsychosis, Richard Saltoun Online Gallery (2023);
Group exhibitions include: Into the Woods, Make Room, Los Angeles USA(2025); La Mariposa, Soho Revue, London UK(2025); A Poem Lovely as a Tree, Sixi Museum, Nanjing China(2024); Supercommunity, Tank Shanghai China(2024); Unweave A Rainbow, Madein Gallery, Shanghai China(2024); 10 Year Anniversary, Lychee One, London UK(2024); At Daybreak, Ignition Project, London UK(2024); DISEMBODIED, Nicodim Gallery, Los Angeles USA(2024); Ode to the Unexpected, Madein Gallery, Shanghai China(2024); X Museum Triennial, Beijing China (2023); Mother Art Prize, Zabludowicz Collection; “Embryos”, West Norwood Project Space (2020); Syncopes, Mimosa House (2021); FBA Futures, Mall Galleries London UK (2019)
She is the recipient of the 2023 Mother Art Prize Online Award and was shortlisted for FBA Futures in 2019. Her works are included in Chelsea and Westminster Hospital Collection, Marcelle Joseph Collection, Michael Weissman Collection and other collections. Qian Qian now lives and works in London.
Marlene Steyn (b.1989 in Cape Town, South Africa), obtained her Master of Fine Art degree in 2014 from the Royal College of Art in London, UK. Her work is included in Phaidon’s prestigious Vitamin C: Clay and Ceramic in Contemporary Art. Artist-in- residence programmes include a collaborative residency with Kay 16 and Artport Residency in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Recent Solo exhibition: MARLENE STEYN, Sasol Art Museum, Stellenbosch, South Africa(2024); Home Bodies, SMAC Gallery, Stellenbosch, South Africa(2023); YOU-ME-VERSE, at Lychee One in London, UK (2022) ; the artist room, SMAC gallery, Cape Town, South Africa (2022); deep she dive her, SMAC Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa(2019); Unbuttoning my belly, Lychee One, London, UK(2019);
Lian Zhang (b. 1984, Hangzhou, China) lives and works in London and Hangzhou. Zhang received a Master degree in Painting from the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou in 2010, and a second Masters degree from the Royal College of Art, London, in 2013. Zhang’s works hint at multifaceted narratives that strain in many different directions at once, creating a current of tension that runs under an overlying sense of serenity. The past and the future are suspended, interweaving allusions to precise historical periods with timeless imagery. Zhang investigates the connections between interior and exterior worlds, constructing scenes both from personal memories and from imaginary landscapes. Through soft brushstrokes and a vivid colour palette, Zhang creates delicate scenes of transformation. Filled with the energy of stasis and motion, her paintings embody a fluidity between objects and figures. Zhang’s paintings are firmly sited within a rich art historical tradition, drawing particularly on the Surrealist and Symbolist movements. They are also inspired by the teachings of Chinese philosophy and Taoism. Zhang’s latest works explore Asian female identity and the experience of living abroad as an immigrant, challenging preconceptions and weaving together complex painterly narratives about what it means to live across multiple cultures. In particular, her recent paintings highlight and undermine some of the ways in which Asian women are stereotyped and objectified.
Recent solo and duo exhibitions include: Across the River in A Land Far Away, Lychee One, London, 2024; The Rabbit Who Hunts Tigers, Sebastien Bertrand, Geneva, 2023; Fast Dreams, Slow Days, Nicodim Gallery, LA, 2022; Weathering with you, Lychee One, London 2022; Constellation and Folds, Lychee One, London, 2020.
Selected recent group exhibitions: Spillâge, Curated by HAZE at Standpoint Gallery, London, 2025; The Nature of Things, Castor Gallery, London, 2024; Two Sides of One Coin, Taikang Art Museum, Beijing, 2024; 10 Years Anniversary, Lychee One, London, 2024; Artissima Art Fair, Sebastien Bertrand, Turin, 2023; Elsewheres, UTA Artist Space, LA, 2023; The Dual-mechanism of the New Generation of Asian artists, Hive Art Centre, Beijing, 2021; Fortune Exhibition of Li’s Family House, Whitespacebeijing, Beijing, 2021; Antisocial Isolation, Delphian Gallery + Saatchi gallery, London, 2020;
About The Curator
Valerie Conghui Wang is the Director of Bao Foundation and the Director of Zhi Art Museum, specializing in global curatorial practices in Eastern aesthetics and Asian art. She holds a Master’s Degree in Aesthetics from the Philosophy Department of Peking University. She was a senior reporter at China Central Television, a specialist at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, and then the founding Director of Zhi Art Museum. Through case studies and retrospective exhibitions, she explores the global impact of Asian art. She has curated important exhibitions such as Fantasy Luis Chan: A Retrospective Exhibition (2018), Wei Ligang: Universality (2019), and The Art of Escape: Gao Yu (2023). She also initiated the Open East: Asia Museum Forum (2019) to advance the re-narration of Asian art within the international context.