In January 2011, UCCA’s Middle Room will be home to Moon in Glass, a new group of works on canvas and mirrors by Chinese painter Ling Jian. For his solo show at UCCA, Ling Jian paints larger-than-life-sized portraits of hauntingly beautiful women onto round canvases, and then replicates the portraits in moon-shaped mirrors of various hues. As visitors move through the exhibition space, the imagery within the mirrors shifts and distorts; as one moves closer, the mirrored portraits dissipate to reveal the face of the beholder. One long wall is given over to an installation of unadorned round mirrors in various colours. Visitors gazing into these looking glasses will see not just their own mirror images, but the reflected portraits of the artist’s own personal “angels” on the wall behind them. Moon in Glass is an exhibition that invites us to contemplate our own shifting self-portraits and shades of identity.

For more information, please read the “Ling Jian: Moon in Glass” press release.