don’t you remember?
October 22 — November 15, 2025
Tuesday — Saturday, 12—5 PM
Closing Reception
Sat, November 15, 2:30PM — 4:30PM
Artists: Xiang Gao, Nick Hoang, Kejie Lin, Tao Ma, Jiongwen Shi
Don't you remember? poses a question we ask of fading moments—intimate, insistent, suspended between longing and loss. This group exhibition gathers artists whose works bear witness to the quiet violence of time: seasons turning, light shifting, spaces emptying, beauty receding just beyond reach.
Here, memory is inseparable from season. Kejie Lin’s tulips in their final bloom become elegies for summer's end. Tao Ma’s daisies against patterned wallpaper hold the last light of long afternoons. Elsewhere, accumulated lines and burned edges become Jiongwen Shi’s emotional cartographies, marking time's passage through patient, obsessive gesture. Architectural interventions observed by Nick Hoang reveal thresholds between interior and exterior worlds—spaces suffused with the atmosphere of recent presence.
What unites these artists is not style but stance: a refusal to look away from transience, a commitment to marking what passes. They attend to life's smaller departures, something not grand but subtle shifts in nuance. The particular warmth of September light. The way a room feels different after someone has just left it. These are changes we register peripherally, half-consciously, only recognizing their significance when they can no longer be traced back.
The exhibition creates a friction between time's relentless forward motion and our desire to hold still, to preserve. Through image-making, these artists resist forgetting, even as they acknowledge that certain moments can never be fully retrieved, only approached through the inadequate, necessary language of form and colour.
In the end, the question remains open. Don't you remember? In asking, we confess what slips away.
About Artists
Tao Ma (Beijing, China) graduated from Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts in Oil Painting in 2005, and is based in Beijing. His works have been exhibited in both China and the United Kingdom. Through his intriguing paintings, Tao aims to capture a sense of warmth, sweetness, and primal love, while also re-evaluating some of the everyday aspects of life.
Nick Hoang (Mississauga, Canada) is a Mississauga based artist whose work plays with reality-inspired environments and explores its relationship with foreign elements. His education in art fundamentals paired with architectural technology lends itself towards blurring the line between reality and imagination. The theme of architectural interventions: introducing foreign entities into existing "untouched" spaces, acts as the foundation to his compositions. He approaches his work with a blend of realism, abstract and a touch of surrealism by employing diverse techniques in each of his pieces, constantly seeking new approaches to foster his artistic growth.
Kejie Lin (Chongqing, China) is a first-generation Canadian Chinese artist based in Richmond Hill, ON. Upon immigrating to Canada in 2017, she transitioned from a two-decade career as a landscape architect to a full-time artistic practice, studying under the esteemed Gongbi master Hui Yu. Her work is rooted in the meticulous techniques of traditional Chinese Gongbi (工笔) painting, while thoughtfully incorporating elements of Japanese ukiyo-e and Western approaches to painting. She draws inspiration from two distinct sources: the immediate beauty of her own Canadian garden and the enduring landscapes of memory. Focusing on floral, bird, and Nature themes, Lin infuses her pieces with personal reflections, striving to integrate classical Eastern art into a contemporary context.
Xiang Gao (Beijing, China) received his MFA from Nanjing University of Arts in 2014. Gao's artistic philosophy centers on the importance of practical painting techniques over abstract theory. His work challenges the rigidity that can develop in mature art forms, particularly exploring the evolution and potential limitations of traditional Chinese painting. Through his practice, Gao seeks to develop new artistic languages that break from tradition while still drawing inspiration from it. Gao's work serves as a bridge between historical artistic practices and innovative modern expression, encouraging a fresh perspective on the role of tradition in contemporary art.
Jiongwen Shi (Beijing, China) holds a MFA in Oil Painting from the Xi'an Academy of Fine Arts in 2007. In her art, the "line" serves as a fundamental yet profound element, evolving over years from a minor detail to the main narrative. Each line and brushstroke records the passage of time, intertwining, entangling, and overlapping in a manner reminiscent of writing rather than painting. Through her practice, Shi seeks to explore the meaning of existence in a chaotic and unclear world.
