Burning Frame by Frame: Shen Cai's personal project

Artistic Director: Li Xiaoshan

Academic Chair: Biography of Lin

Curator: Chen Rui

host:Nanjing University of the Arts Art Museum

Co-organized by:Institute of Contemporary Art, Nanjing University of the Arts

Exhibition time: June 15 - July 14, 2025

Exhibition Address: Nanjing University of the Arts Art Museum 0 Space

Opening time：June 15, 2025 14:30

Shen Cai's "Heraclitus" uses the ancient metaphor of "flame" to reactivate the thinking of "fluidity" and "existence". The core of the work is not the optical device itself, but the continuous generation of flames in the projection of light and shadow: the flames in the hand-drawn draft are disassembled into pixels by the algorithm, and then returned to the concrete through sketching again; each round trip stitches the technical rationality and the body traces into a new visual layer. This cycle makes "error" part of the production mechanism. As Heraclitus said, everything can continue in difference and tension.

The exhibition hall uses a single-point high-power light source and wall projection to amplify the breathing flicker of the flame image, making light a sculptural medium: the viewer's steps and shadows cut through the picture from time to time, making "watching" an event that can be rewritten at any time. The space is thus transformed into a testing ground for perception - the flame burns in the dark and disintegrates in the spectrum; the positions of the subject and the object are constantly exchanged, just like a constant reminder to us: the image is not an object or an image, but a continuous and unfinished history of generation.

The series of print manuscripts exhibited at the same time retain the geometric skeleton and brushstroke texture of each stage, which is the index of the self-archaeology of the work; they witness the multiple translations from "fire" to "image" to "light", and also allow the three dimensions of technology-nature-humanity to intersect on paper. In the end, "Heraclitus" proposes a polyphony about time, materials and speculation: light and shadow are just the entrance, and what is really ignited is the gaze of change itself.

Some works pictures

Artist Profile

Artist, currently teaching at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. In 2019, he graduated from the School of Design of the Central Academy of Fine Arts with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. In the same year, he received a scholarship from the China Scholarship Council to study Art Media and Technology at Parsons School of Design in New York, where he received a Master of Fine Arts.

As a highly anticipated new generation of artists, Shen Cai actively explores the relationship between humans and machines in various media forms in his artistic practice. His main research area is the human-machine relationship dominated by humans in art, and he focuses on the gray area between mechanical and human nature, and establishes and expresses the new order and new relationship between humans and machines through images, installations and other forms. Shen Cai's works have been exhibited in art museums and art institutions at home and abroad, such as the Central Academy of Fine Arts Art Museum, Shenzhen He Xiangning Art Museum, Sheila C. Johnson Design Center in New York, the Aronson and Kellen Gallery in New York, Ethan Cohen KuBe in New York, Shanghai Damaru Art Museum, and The VictorianArtist Society in Melbourne. He has also participated in the selection of domestic and foreign art projects including the 2019 Qingjin Project, the Edinburgh Project-CAI Young Artist Lab Project in the UK, and the 2023 Sovereign Asian Art Prize.