Michael Cherney (b. 1969, New York) received his undergraduate degree in Chinese language and history at the State University of New York at Binghamton and arrived in Beijing for graduate language study at Beijing Language and Culture University in 1991. More than three decades later, he continues to reside in Beijing and travels extensively across China. His major solo exhibitions include: "The Heart-Mind Learns From the Eyes" (Three Shadows Photography Art Center / +3 Gallery, Beijing, 2018); "Among Stone and Mist: Chinese Landscape Photography by Michael Cherney" (The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, 2014); "Reframing" (798 Photo Gallery, Beijing, 2006). He has taken part in numerous group exhibitions, including: "Nature's Pure Harmony" (Minsheng Museum of Modern Art, Beijing, 2025); "Go with the Flow: Reimaginations of the River" (Fotografiska Image Art Center, Shanghai, 2024); "The First Jinan International Biennale" (Shandong Art Museum, Jinan, 2020); "Beyond Ink" (China Art Museum, Shanghai, 2018); "Streams and Mountains without End: Landscape Traditions of China" (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2018); "Landscape Duets: The Collaborative Works of Arnold Chang and Michael Cherney" (Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, 2015); "The Art of the Chinese Album" (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2014); "Journeys: Mapping the Earth and mind in Chinese art" (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2007). His works have been included in the permanent collections of numerous institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Cleveland Museum of Art, Getty Research Institute, Harvard University Art Museums, Hong Kong University Museum and Art Gallery, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Princeton University Art Museum, Yale University Art Gallery, among others. In addition, he has lectured at various institutions, including Northwestern University, the Seattle Art Museum, National Taiwan Normal University, the University of Toronto, UCCA Center for Contemporary Art, and the Central Academy of Fine Arts, among other.

Public Programs for the exhibition “Michael Cherney: Middle Distance” include two opening events and one scholarly conversation. From the perspectives of art history and social history, the programs will explore Cherney’s artistic practice of revisiting classical Chinese painting traditions through photography, while engaging with the natural world, history, and geography.

The Opening Guided Tour will be led by the artist and the curator, leading audiences through several of Cherney’s key bodies of work: from close observation of micro-ecologies to expansive views of historical landscapes; from the intimate, album-like mode of close looking to the immersive, intimate mode of handscroll viewing. The tour will continue in the UCCA Alcove for the workshop “As it Unfolds,” which will focus on the visual textures and observational methods in Cherney’s handscroll works, inviting participants to engage with the materiality and temporality of his photography. During the exhibition period, the conversation, “Images Entering Landscape,” takes Cherney’s new work “苏-Thoreau” as its point of departure, considering how the artist engages philosophical ideas associated with Su Shi and Henry David Thoreau in his photographic practice. The discussion examines how Cherney revisits the tradition of Chinese literati landscape through low-resolution, high-grain imagery, and how a deliberate retreat from visual verisimilitude generates images with a distinct spiritual orientation.