Mocube BEIJING
Duo exhibition by Jonathan Miles, Xu Chenxi
Curated by Deng Ting
09 Aug – 14 Sep 2025
Opening: 4pm, 09 August 2025
In celebration of a decade since its founding, MOCUBE presents The Softening of All Edges, a thoughtful and visually poetic duo exhibition by Jonathan Miles and Xu Chenxi, on view from 9th August through 14th September, 2025.
As the first solo exhibition at MOCUBE for both artists, The Softening of All Edges showcases their significant series from recent years, offering a deep exploration of how softness can be transformed into a language and energy that transcends time and culture within a contemporary visual context.
Painting here is regarded as a slow drifting. It is in no hurry to arrive; instead, it extends like an echo suspended in the air, like an invisible eddy on the surface of water. Colour, form and texture permeate one another in their flow, softening boundaries and leaving the act of looking without a fixed point of reliance. The “softening” referred to in the title of the exhibition does not imply a blunting of edges; rather, it is a current of energy that moves at the point of encounter – light, time and emotion endlessly intersect, crease and spill across the canvas, pushing back those once sharp contours, dissolving them into a state of suspension.
This “softening” responds to the sensitivity to light and atmosphere in Western modernist painting since Monet, and to a certain extent carries forward the traces of gesture and chance found in Abstract Expressionism. Yet it does not remain confined to a Western context. In the work of Jonathan Miles and Xu Chenxi one can also perceive the characteristic liubai (the charged use of blank space) and flowing spirit of East Asian painting – that approach inherited from ancient landscapes, in which time and breath are drawn into the canvas, making the image both light and inwardly tense. Within this cross-cultural confluence, the visual philosophies of East and West are folded back into one another: the painterly intensity of the West here ceases to be a matter of forceful gesture and is tempered by an Eastern stillness; while the ethereality of the East, within the language of contemporary painting, is newly endowed with a tactile, sensorial weight.
Jonathan Miles leaves the rhythm of gesture inscribed upon the surface: fractured lines, abrupt fields of colour, and sweeping, turning, retracting traces of the brush. He allows the image to hover between control and release, entering collision, and retreating. In certain areas, bright colour tightens like a drawn string, while the empty expanses elsewhere convey a slow, intangible dispersal. This exhibition focuses on two of Jonathan Miles’ series, 1000 Paintings and Lily O. One addresses his identity as an artist in its exploration of “the image of painting” rather than “the painting of an image”, while the other reflects his simultaneous role as a writer, nesting the structures of fictional narrative within the work. Through these overlapping identities and spaces, time slips away from its prescribed trajectory, circling between the real and the imagined.
By contrast, Xu Chenxi’s paintings resemble silent messengers from space, often beginning with the lightest sensations—a faint brushstroke or a subtle wash of color, like a breath drifting from afar that slowly diffuses across the canvas. In her work, shared human emotions are translated into compositions of color, rhythm, and resonance. Rather than seeking a clear center, her creative process allows each pause and overlap to become part of color’s own emergence.This exhibition presents her new works from 2022 to 2025. Her large-scale pieces unfold with a flowing and unhurried gesture, echoing the rhythms of breath and movement, while her smaller works are more concentrated, releasing heightened emotional intensity—like fragments of daily light distilled repeatedly in delicate glass vessels.Situated between steadiness and fluidity, inner contemplation and global experience, Her practice leans toward a mode of “non-linear time” in painting. Time here is not a linear narrative, but a layered construction of color fields and translucent strokes—a resting place for perception that invites the viewer into a near-meditative state of looking.
As these two rhythms draw close to one another within the gallery, an unexpected resonance emerges. Their colours, like a recovered sense of touch, are tender yet tinged with a wandering uncertainty, unbound by objects and unanchored by meaning. The airy breath of Xu Chenxi’s paintings and the more solemn, enduring silence of Jonathan Miles’ canvases form in the space a double suspension. They appear to come from different directions, yet together they transform past artistic experience into new forms of flow, converging before the viewer as a tidal surge of history.
適逢墨方藝術空間成立十週年，墨方將於2025年8月9日至9月14日舉辦一場詩意與哲思並存的雙人展——《當所有邊鋒都變柔和》，呈現藝術家喬納森·邁爾斯（Jonathan Miles）與許晨茜的繪畫創作。作為兩位藝術家在墨方的首次個展，此次展覽將展出他們近年來的重要系列作品，深入探索在當代視覺語境中，「柔和」如何轉化為一種穿越時間與文化的能量和語言。
繪畫在這裡被看作一種緩慢的漂移。它不急於抵達，而是延展成空氣中的回聲，像水面上無形的渦流。色彩、形狀、質感在流動之中相互滲透，柔化了邊界，也使觀看變得無所依徬。展覽標題所指的「柔和」，並不是削弱鋒芒，而是一種在相遇之處流動的能量——光、時間與情緒在畫布上不斷地交錯、褶皺、溢出，那些原本鋒利的界線被持續地推遠，模糊成一種漂浮的狀態。
這種「柔和」既回應了西方現代主義繪畫自莫奈以來對光與氛圍的敏感，也在某種程度上延續了抽象表現主義中動作痕跡與偶然性的傳統。然而，它並未停留於西方語境之中。在Jonathan Miles和許晨茜的作品中，我們亦可看到東亞繪畫所特有的留白與氣韻流動——那種由古人的山水間延伸出的、將時間與呼吸納入畫布的方式，使畫面既輕盈又具內在張力。在這種跨文化的融合中，東西方不同的視覺思想被重新折疊在一起：西方的繪畫性在此不再是關於姿態的激烈，而是被東方式的靜謐所調和；東方的空靈則在當代繪畫語境中被重新賦予了感官的厚度。
Jonathan Miles將動作的節奏留在畫面上：斷裂的線條、突然而至的色塊，以及旋轉、折返的刷痕。他讓圖像在控制與放任之間徘徊，一次次快速進入碰撞，再一次次退讓。畫面中某些部位的明亮色彩像是被拉緊的弦，而其餘空闊的部分又讓人感到緩慢的、無形的流散。本次主要展出了Jonathan Miles的兩個系列《1000 paintings》和《Lily O》，一個指向他作為藝術家的身份對於「繪畫的圖像」而非「圖像的繪畫」的描繪，另一個呼應他同時作為作家，將小說的敘事層層嵌套，在多重身份與空間的交疊中，時間從既定的軌道逃匿，在虛實之間回旋。
而許晨茜的畫作如同來自空間中的無聲信使，似乎總是從極輕的感受開始，一道淡淡的筆觸或一片色暈，像是從遠處飄來的氣息，逐漸在畫布中擴散開來，將人類的共同情感轉譯為色彩、節奏與韻律的組合。她的創作並非追求明確的中心，而是讓每一次停頓、疊合都成為色彩自身的生成過程。本次展覽呈現了她2022年至2025年的新作，她的大尺幅作品展現出流動而鬆弛的筆勢，似乎呼應著呼吸與行走的節律；而小尺幅作品則更為凝練，釋放出密度更高的情緒張力，猶如將日常微光收入玻璃器皿中反復沈澱。在篤定與流動、內在的觀想與國際化經驗的交織之中，她趨向於一種「非線性時間」的繪畫思維，時間不再是線性的敘事進程，而是層層堆疊的色域與半透明筆觸所建構出的棲息之所，誘導觀看者進入一種近乎冥想的觀看狀態。
當兩種節奏在展廳里彼此接近時，出現的是一種意想不到的共振。他們的色彩，像失而復得的觸覺，既溫柔又帶著不確定的遊蕩，不為物象所限，也不為意義所錨定。許晨茜繪畫中輕盈的呼吸，與Jonathan Miles畫面里更為厚重雋永的沈默，在空間中形成了一種雙重的漂浮。它們似乎來自不同的方向，將過去的藝術經驗化為新的流動形式，在觀者面前匯合成一片歷史的潮汐。
