show me how to fly away
Bai Mengfan, Xie Lingrou, Liu Xuan, Killion Huang, Joyce Chonghui Wu, Zhou Meng, Yu Wenjie, Wu Muhan, Yang Di.
THE BLANC & Nan Ke Gallery
15 East 40th Street, New York
May 15 - June 27, 2026
Show Me How To Fly Away, installation view.
THE BLANC partners with Shanghai-based Nan Ke Gallery to present Show Me How To Fly Away, a group exhibition featuring nine defining artists from Nan Ke’s roster.
Co-curated by Leo Yuan and Otto Neu, the exhibition assembles over twenty works spanning painting, sculpture, video, and installation. The title’s whimsical, escapist undertones evoke the transformative power of art to transport the viewer toward more fantastical horizons.
Show Me How To Fly Away, installation view.
The desire to seek an “elsewhere” is a persistent, recurring instinct. When reality feels a bit too static, we find ourselves drifting toward distant geographies, reimagined worlds, or the cherished people and moments that linger in memory. These various modes of departure provide the vantage point through which to encounter the artists in this exhibition.
Killion Huang, Taro Drip (芋艿水滴), 2026. Oil on canvas. 80 x 100 cm
In his recent paintings, Killion Huang (b. 1999) offers a close look at queer identity and intimacy in contemporary China. Emotional connections within queer relationships in contemporary China become the site where identity takes shape—not as something defined by labels, but continuously formed through relational dynamics. The paintings provide a window into these tender moments of connection.
Joyce Chonghui Wu, Tell Em To Call Me, 2026. Printed fabric, acrylic on canvas. 30 x 20 cm.
Joyce Chonghui Wu (b.1994) explores overlooked fragments of urban life and uses textiles and stitching to reassemble a personal archive of collected images, fragments, and memories. Her work weaves these disparate elements into layered narratives that explore the heterogeneity of everyday life and the nuances of multicultural experience.
Liu Xuan, Sound Is Fact, Music Is Fiction #3, 2020. Mixed media. Dimensions variable.
The metaphor of “migration” takes a more tangible form in Liu Xuan’s (b. 1991) installation Sound is Fact, Music is Fiction #3. This site-specific version of the work features a bundle of black balloons ensnared in wires and held down by a retired manhole cover sourced from Shanghai. The audience can step on the cover, which produces an ambient sound.
Right: Yang Di, Safe Word (安全词), 2020. 4K video, 15 min, 3840 x 2160. Edition 5+2AP
Middle: Zhou Meng, Sketches of Impression #2, #7, #8 (隐迹). 2023. Ink on paper. 30.5 x 22.5 cm.
Left: Bai Mengfan, Nile VII (尼罗VII), 2026. Oil on canvas. 60 x 80 cm.
Yang Di’s (b. 1990) video, Safe Word, is based on a journey to Mars, projecting individual experience into a speculative future, allowing reality to be re-perceived through constructed scenarios.
From left to right: Xie Lingrou, Ashes (灰烬), 2023. Oil on canvas. 60 x 50 cm.
Joyce Chonghui Wu,The Furcifer Labordies (拉波得龙), 2024. Printed fabric, acrylic, pastel on canvas. 50x30
Bai Mengfan, Asymmetrical Fountain Pools V (不对称的喷泉池V), 2025. Oil on canvas. 102 x 133 cm.
Joyce Chonghui Wu,The Furcifer Antimenas (天狗龙), 2024. Printed fabric, acrylic, pastel on canvas. 50x30
Killion Huang, The Casual (日常), 2026. Oil on canvas. 60 x 50 cm.
Having lived in New York for several years, Bai Mengfan (b. 1994) brings two works that continue her depiction of the complex entanglement of urban flows, financial circulation, and architectural structures. Her refined surfaces, containing traces of human impact on the surrounding environment, capture moments of quiet intensity and poetic intrigue.
Bai Mengfan, Nile VII (尼罗VII), 2026. Oil on canvas. 60 x 80 cm.
Xie Lingrou, Spring (春), 2024. Oil on canvas. 130 x 100 cm.
Xie Lingrou (b. 1999) presents interior scenes that juxtapose portraiture with delicate objects such as flowers and glass. Her dark-toned oil compositions present an ephemeral, surreal quality that summons memories layered over the passage of time.
Xie Lingrou, In The Shade of The Trees (树荫之中), 2025. Oil on canvas. 120 x 150 cm.
Yu Wenjie, Not Yet Light #1 (未明 1), 2025. Cotton cloth, linen, elastic fabric, thread, sand, pastel, resin and wood paint. 50 x 30 cm.
Likewise, Yu Wenjie (b. 1997) layers painting into a palimpsest of mixed media that incorporates paint, fabric, sand and varieties of paper to create pastel-toned compositions that explore the tension between fragility and structure.
From left to right: Zhou Meng, Sketches of Impression #2, #7, #8 (隐迹). 2023. Ink on paper. 30.5 x 22.5 cm.
Zhou Meng’s (b. 1992) small-scale ink works on paper, depicting layered characters, are reminiscent of Chinese inkwash paintings. The works on paper are presented next to compact-size sculptures made from fossil materials, situating Zhou’s work within an expanded anthropological and mythological context, where image and material together carry traces of time and cultural imagination.
Wu Muhan, Body (肉身), 2025. Metal gasket, brass, iron, plastic. 26 x 16 x 16 cm.
Wu Muhan (b. 1997), by contrast, employs a restrained minimalist sculptural language, combining industrial components with everyday objects to produce forms charged with perceptual tension, negotiating between systemic logic and individual experience.
Show Me How To Fly Away, exhibition poster, designed by Wu Muhan.